Our Own Way 2 Preview

Here’s the first chapter of Our Own Way 2!

If you want to read the second chapter, you can do so right here on my Patreon.

More chapters are coming to early access for my 3$/month Patrons.


“We should probably discuss what organizing our new life together actually looks like,” Ellen said as she slipped her robe on.

It was one of the few things she’d salvaged from her previous life.

“Yeah,” Gabe agreed, belting his jeans and then grabbing his t-shirt.

Their excitement had naturally led to a different kind of excitement and they had just finished showering from that.

He pulled his shirt into place. “What does it look like to you?”

Ellen laughed and then sighed, tying her robe belt just above her broad hips. “Of course you ask me first. I don’t know. And the problem is that I’m still too...I don’t know, I’m still recovering and mired in my job. I feel like I’ll have a better capacity to really dig into it when I finally get fired. I know it has something to do with visual design. I like art.”

“Is there a reason you don’t want to quit?” he asked.

“Yes. Absolutely. When you get higher up into salaried positions with a bit more security, traditionally, if a company has to let you go or fire you, they typically like to protect themselves from any sort of repercussions. And in my experience, the chances of that happening go up if they treated you like shit. Which they have.”

“So...what, they’ll bribe you not to start shit?” he asked.

“Essentially, yes. Typically in comes in the form of a ‘severance package’ that you must sign a legally binding agreement to get. And that agreement says: I won’t sue you.”

“Could you sue them?”

She pursed her lips. “Possibly. There’s definitely some shit they’ve pulled. But in truth, I don’t want to deal with a drawn out lawsuit and lawyers and all the fucking hassle that the American ‘justice system’ entails. It’s a gamble anyway. They have very good lawyers, and they can afford to wait me out.”

“Huh. Interesting. And depressing. But all right, that makes sense. So, you want to get fired, take a vacation, and then, once the mental and emotional dust finally settles, you want to reexamine yourself and your life to determine a path forward.”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Okay.”

He was still formulating his own response, because there was a lot to consider, or at least it felt that way, when she frowned and sat down at the foot of the bed.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Mostly, just...are you really okay with this? I mean, are you truly okay with having an out-of-work girlfriend?”

Gabe resisted his instinct to immediately say yes and really thought about it for a moment. Was he? He sure felt like that. They had money, in that Ellen had a fair amount of money, and they were in a living situation that they could sustain theoretically for years.

Half a decade even. That was a really long time.

“Unless I’m missing something really obvious: yes, I am okay with that. I’m happy with it,” he replied. “Are you comfortable with it?”

“I...mostly am? The problem is the fear. I know that some of this is me just being terrified of the idea of going against what is essentially my core ideology. I feel like I’m trying to leave a cult. Which I guess I kind of am? We basically worship jobs and work and careers and overachieving and working yourself to fucking death.”

“That’s true,” he muttered.

“And I’ve been doing it since I was in high school. You’d think it’d be easy to just stop, but I’m afraid. I’m not even sure why I’m afraid.”

“I think you’re worried that you aren’t sure how much of you will be left after you remove this massive part of yourself you’ve been building for two decades.”

She looked up finally, staring at him, almost startled. “I...yes. That actually makes a lot of sense. Which sounds horrifying and stupid. Why is so much of my identity wrapped up in my goddamned job?”

“Because you, like most of the rest of us, were forced into it. People roll their eyes at phrases like ‘capitalist propaganda’ but we are literally indoctrinated with actual, real propaganda designed by real people and blasted twenty four seven at us since birth. We are indoctrinated into worshiping hard work and money and status. They’re capitalizing on a biological impulse, several of them, and twisting them into something seriously fucked up.”

“Is it that bad?” she murmured.

“Yes! When the average job is treated as: ‘you should be thanking me for the opportunity to be abused and exploited as you work yourself to death while surviving on the most minimum possible resources’, yes, that is absolutely screwed beyond belief.”

“...yeah. That makes sense. And the fact that people actually defend that...yeah.” She shifted uncomfortably. “I just don’t want you to think I’m a lazy bitch who’s only with you for money.”

“How could I possibly think that?! I mean, first of all, you have all the money.”

“Yeah, right now. But that will change naturally as time goes on. If I’m not bringing any in, and you are, then you’d end up being the one making financial decisions because you’re the one with the money. And I don’t know the statistics of how likely you are to succeed at writing, but I think the odds are in your favor.”

“Maybe. We’ll see about that. But I don’t think that, and I won’t. Even if we end up in a situation where I’m bringing in loads of cash and you’re bringing in nothing, it’s not like I’d make all the financial decisions with an iron fist.”

“Why?” she asked. “You’d have absolute power in that situation.”

“I wouldn’t because this is a relationship, as in a partnership. I mean, even practically speaking I know that you are smarter than me. In general, but very specifically with relation to finances. Why wouldn’t I get your advice? But more significantly, I don’t want to just make unilateral decisions in the relationship.

“Not unless it falls under something you just don’t want any input on. We’re still separate people and, to a certain degree, we still have our own lives, but we are now making the decision to entwine our lives together. What I do affects you and vice versa. Trying to make huge decisions, let alone huge financial ones, without your input, would be not just stupid, but cruel.”

Ellen stared at him for a long time, not saying anything. He waited, wondering if he’d hit some nerve or crossed some line without realizing it.

Finally, she blinked a few times and gave her head a little shake. “Wow.”

“What?” he asked.

“I’m just...it’s actually coming to me just how different you are from everyone else I’ve dated or really known. I don’t think any man I’ve ever dated before would even be able to successfully articulate that, let alone actually tell it to me. The best I’ve ever gotten is: let’s keep our finances separate. You do you and I’ll do me,” she replied.

“That’s not a terrible idea.”

“No, but it’s safe. In a very individualistic way. It’s safe from the other person. I don’t want to be safe from you, Gabe. I want to be safe with you. And I want you to feel safe with me.”

“I do.”

“I know...and I feel the same way. But it’s just-this keeps happening. I keep realizing that you’re not just a great boyfriend but an amazing one. And I keep looking back and wondering how the hell I ended up in such awful relationships…” She sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment, closing her eyes, then dropped her hand and took a deep breath.

Letting it out it, she opened her eyes back. “But we need to focus. What I was saying is that I’m frightened of the future. If I get fired from my job and I don’t go seeking another one pretty quickly, I could be destroying a career that I’ve been building for over a decade now. Because let’s say I stop working and everything goes well for a decade, but then we get screwed over and I need to find a job again. I can’t just go back to the level I’m at now, almost certainly. A ten year gap in employment? I’d be virtually unemployable.”

“And that’s terrifying,” he murmured, sitting beside her now.

“Yes. It is. What if I’m throwing away everything on a whim? I could theoretically fuck myself over for the rest of my life.”

“I think…” He hesitated, looking down at the floor between his feet.

“What? You might as well just be real with me.”

“All right. I think this is coming from a place of fear. Which you’ve admitted, but I think this is coming from a place of irrational fear. Or...more to the point: not-quite-rational fear. I think you aren’t necessarily wrong about this stuff, but I do think you’re making it out as worse to be than it really will be. I think you’re smart enough and motivated enough that if it came down to it, you could and would find some way to make it work.”

She chuckled a little grimly. “You sure that’s not just coming from a place of worship? You called me an apex predator of a girlfriend and a goddess more than once. Clearly you’re biased.”

He laughed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah...I am. But I say that with as much lack of bias as I can. Maybe this will help, though: whatever happens, I think we can make it work. Five years from now, ten, twenty, fifty, we can figure it out.”

“Man, fifty? Sounds like you’re proposing to me,” she murmured, putting her hand over the back of his.

“I, uh…”

Ellen laughed. “Wow that really threw you just right off your game, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I was just teasing. But you’re right. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I believe in us. And I need to remember that, especially in the face of terror.” She was silent for a moment, contemplating. “You’re right. I should trust myself, and I should trust you, and us. It’s a leap of faith, but I’m willing to take it. And I shouldn’t not take it just because I’m familiar with a certain level of misery. Now, you go. We’ve established I’m a mess and I will be until I get fired. Your turn,” she said, turning to face him more.

“All right. Obviously, I want to tackle my job harder and take it more seriously. Produce more, faster. And you have offered to help, and I want to take it. You offered to give everything a more serious edit and also to help me with the cover art. Are we still on for that?” he asked.

“Very much so, yes. What I’ve done so far has been fun. So, give me all the most recent versions of all your work that is finished and I will give it a serious, more thorough edit and send it back. I will also start putting together cover art for you. I have ideas and we can work together on that.”

“Perfect. Thank you. It is deeply appreciated.” He paused, then grinned. “I never really thought I’d have a girlfriend who would actively participate in my writing.”

“I am very happy to.”

“So am I. Okay, next thing. I need to sit down and actually make more of a plan for the future. Figure out what I want to do. But basically, I know I want to keep doing this. I want to keep writing erotica and romantic stuff and publishing it myself. I want to set up more of my own little corner of the internet, but that’s what I want to do,” he said.

“Perfect,” she replied.

“You don’t think I should be more ambitious? Have backups?”

“I think those things would be smart but...I also think you should live your life how you want and within your means. And right now, our means are very forgiving. Three hundred bucks a month plus gas and groceries and internet? We can survive on probably five hundred a month if we really have to. That’s amazing. I think we should work on whittling down our debt as fast as we can, but that can wait for now. And I think we’ve pretty much nailed down the pertinent facts. And…” She smiled suddenly. “I think I want to go on a date with you today. We haven’t really done that. Unless there’s something else you want to do.”

“We haven’t really done a traditional date,” he replied. Gabe smirked suddenly and slipped a hand along her thigh, beneath the robe. “There is something else I’d like to do…”

“Gabe!” she cried, laughing and grabbing his hand. “Oh my God-how are you this horny? We just did it!”

“I’m dating you,” he replied, opening up her robe a bit, “I mean just look at you.”

She sighed heavily and blushed, pulling her robe closed. “I appreciate it but-seriously! How are you this horny? After what we did, and everything you did with Holly!?”

“I have a lot of catching up to do,” he replied with a shrug.

“Fine. Fair enough. But I’m serious, let’s have a date. And we can end it with some more personal fun in this bed. Not before, though. I need...a little break.”

He kissed her forehead. “All right. What do you want to do?”

She pursed her lips in consideration for a moment, then her eyes lit up abruptly. “You know what? You decide. That’s what I want. I want you to make this date happen.”

Gabe thought about it for a moment, wondering briefly, almost instinctively, if this was a ‘you’d better guess what I want’ situation, but he passed that out of hand.

Ellen was not that kind of woman.

“I’ll make it happen.”

Raw VIII Preview

Here is the first chapter of Raw VIII.

The second chapter, and subsequent future chapters, can be read on my Patreon.


The sun burned coldly above them as Jak led his small group across the winter desolation.

It was just visible through the clouds, a pale gray stone glimpsed in a shallow creek, rubbed smooth by the passage of time and water.

The winds were bitter and strong enough that he had considered delaying the journey.

But the situation was getting more dire.

Ahead, he could see the treeline that served as Avat’s Forest’s northern edge.

He led the warparty through the snow, squinting and raising one hand as the wind shifted and began blowing right into his face. At least it wasn’t snowing.

The sun had risen and fallen fifteen times since he had saved Azure.

Much had happened in that passage of time. Niri and Rylee had since relocated to Ara Forest, to live with and help the elves there, and to help integrate their own people to living in the forest, as it was now the safest place on the entire island.

Jak had spent most of his time trekking back and forth between Fair Field and Ara Forest, getting his people and whatever supplies they could spare to the safety of the woodlands. It wasn’t a perfect solution, as there were an increasing amount of corrupted between the two locations, but the monsters did seem to have a slight aversion to the northern forest.

The rest of the time he spent resting, hunting for supplies or food, and, mostly, fighting off corrupted.

While the first days after he had completed his trek of the island and gotten Azure to safety had seen relatively few of the creatures, it was not to last. Or so it had seemed at the time. They had begun attacking in small clusters at first, but then real warparties had come. Not just former humans and elves and karn, but creatures as well.

And then monsters, real monsters.

More of the awful, impossible things that looked more made than born began attacking them, doing some real damage.

Jak and Keeza and Nessa and the others fought them off, almost always losing a few people. It was a difficult way to live, but he had to admit that it could be much, much worse. And he kept expecting it to get that way.

It did, until suddenly it didn’t.

The day before yesterday was the first where there were no attacks. Everyone kept waiting as the sun rose over the cold, barren landscape, hunting for signs of the attack that was coming. The tension kept rising as nothing kept happening, and this continued well into the night. Eventually, everyone went to sleep, or tried to.

The next day, it was even worse.

Still nothing came. No corrupted were sighted.

The sun crawled across the gray sky. The winds tormented the land. The cold persisted. Still no corrupted came as night fell a second time.

That was yesterday, and Jak was feeling the pressure of time and other constraints.

Their time was limited and he had to act.

Moving people from Fair Field to Ara Forest was just a single step on the path that had to be walked if they were to survive this catastrophe. Every day that passed was another day that their enemies could enact whatever dire, evil plans they had concocted. It was also another day that they were consuming precious food.

Azure had told him something several days ago that had frightened him deeply, something none of them had even truly considered. Thinking ahead was possible, but not necessarily obvious to the average person. For the most part, the farthest they thought ahead was a single cycle of seasons, and only then because they had learned from the past that there was a set cycle to the seasons, and that if they wanted to survive winter, the final season in the cycle, they needed to spend the previous seasons leading up to it preparing.

But for the most part, people didn’t think much beyond the next few days.

Azure had pointed out that it was possible that even if they defeated all their enemies and slayed all the corrupted and dealt with the Barrens, they might still die due to a lack of food. The winter had killed much of the plant life and some of the animal life, and the death spell that had been cast over the island had killed much more than that.

What if not enough deer survived the winter? What if they went extinct?

This question could be applied to every form of life on the island, plants included.

And so Jak had spread the word: no hunting, no gathering. The only exception was fish from the ocean. It was still a source of food and the ocean was much larger than the island. So now he was faced with a problem of hundreds upon hundreds of mouths to feed, and a rapidly dwindling reserve of food left to feed them.

A lot had been stored up at Fair Field, but it was already diminishing. What they had left would not see them through the winter, even with half the population moved to Ara Forest. The same was true at every other village.

It wasn’t an immediately dangerous problem, but it would be soon, and so they had been trying to find a way around it ever since. Jak’s first inclination was to ask everyone, every last person, if they knew of any hidden stores or caches of food. Or really of anything, because at this point just about everything would be useful.

They had lost a lot in the attack.

Today was the day that they would begin acting on this knowledge they had gained. He got all sorts of answers. He and Nessa and the other leaders had organized three primary warparties. One would go to the Verdant Valley and to Gather Village, and gather up whatever was left, as well as check any caches in the area or on the way there. The second would go to Wetstone and do the same. The third, Jak’s warparty, would return to Avat’s Forest.

A lot had been left behind during the invasion, and now it was time to see what was left.

At last, they reached the treeline.

Jak paused, holding up his fist, and took a look around. He saw nothing. No movement among the dead forest save for the occasional drift of snow dislodged by the winds. Standing for a long time, he stared, ignoring the cold, the press of time, everything but what his senses told him.

And they told him there was nothing in the forest ahead of them.

He still didn’t like it. Every single time there had been a lack of corrupted so far, it had led to something bad. And they’d run into only a handful on the way here.

Jak motioned for them to continue. He led his warparty into the treeline, taking a less obvious path that would lead them in a more direct route to the northern outpost. He sensed someone getting closer and then Nessa was beside him.

He glanced quickly at her. She looked out of place in the snowbound environment, wrapped up in heavy furs. Karn were tough, but they were at a disadvantage during winter. From what he’d come to understand, they tended to stay in their caves or huts more than any other race when the cold days came.

It was having an effect on her. Since the snowfall began, she’d been quieter and more withdrawn and, just lately, sullen. Normally she was filled with a rowdy kind of hope, and it hurt him to see that stifled. She was sleeping more and she’d lost weight, but, then again, they all had. She was no less fearsome though.

“There’s none here either, huh?” she murmured, breaking a silence that had stayed with them most of the way here.

“It seems that way,” he replied.

“Where could they have gone?”

“I wish I knew.”

Some had postulated that perhaps the death spell had worn off, that maybe they had simply collapsed and died a true death after enough time. But the handful they did enter cut against this theory. Jak supposed it wasn’t impossible, that all but the heartiest of corpses had fallen to be buried in the snow.

It didn’t strike him as correct though.

So far, they had yet to see another Revek. Or, if they had, he had not heard of it. He was absolutely certain that they were hidden away somewhere, probably in the Barrens, in some secret, well-defended place, and they were planning something.

Something dark and dangerous and deadly for everyone else on this island.

He kept thinking that the corrupted must be hidden somewhere, some location he was not aware of, some secret place. They were hidden and gathering, perhaps even being strengthened somehow, and they would launch a massive attack on his settlement, or others.

That was why it was important to do this now, and quickly, while there was still time.

Of course, that didn’t even deal with the other problem that they may be facing. The embyr were still an unknown element to the overall situation. They always had been, but now it was worse. Jak had thought on it much during the days and the nights.

In the end, he had decided on a course of action. They had sent runners to the embyr lands, with careful instructions from Keeza. Whatever news they brought back would decide the course of action he, and as many others as he could muster, would take.

If there were no karn slaves seen within the embyr lands, then he would leave them be while he dealt with the Revek and the corrupted.

If there were karn slaves there, and if there was no obvious or immediate way to deal with the Revek and corrupted by the time he learned of it, then Jak would muster his warparty, his army, and he would march on the embyr.

It occurred to him that this task would be even more difficult than before, because if there were karn slaves, it meant that it would be too dangerous to bring any karn with them. They would become mind-gone and turn against them.

After that incident with Nessa, he knew it to be true.

Even she, with all her might and resistance, could not stop the power of the corrupted Star Crystals.

And the karn were the main fighting force on the island, meaning they would have to make due without them. Because he couldn’t just leave them there. And, on top of that, he was going to need every last living soul on the island to defeat the corrupted.

Well, every last soul but the embyr.

Even if they offered an alliance, he was fairly certain that he would not take it.

Jak paused again as they reached the northern outpost. He felt a tearing at his heart as he saw the dilapidated, desolate state of it. A few of the huts had collapsed and everything was covered in snow. It had a feel of eerie abandon, not that dissimilar to the old karn villages they’d visited. There didn’t seem to be anything living around it.

Making quick hand motions to the others, he had a handful of them remain behind to watch their backs and brought the rest forward with him to clear it. Their feet crunching lightly in the snow, they made brisk work of searching the outpost for threats.

Jak took one of the remaining huts and peered cautiously inside, his adze out and ready. It was cold and dim within, and he felt a curious mixture of annoyance and hope as he saw that one of the baskets holding grain had been disturbed by something, a rabbit or a deer maybe, and somewhat recently. He took it as a good sign.

Finishing up his search of the outpost and finding nothing, Jak made quick motions to everyone, and they all got to work, Nessa leading them now. They dug into the derelict and collapsed huts, hunting for supplies, food and tools and medicinal plants, anything.

Jak walked over to the boulder and assumed the exact same pose he had struck what felt like so long ago during that first night, when he had made the decision to abandon Avat’s Forest. It had been a good decision, but how much did it matter?

Well, a lot of people were alive right this very moment who would otherwise be dead if he’d chosen to stay.

Perhaps it mattered more than his abused, exhausted mind thought.

Someone was approaching him. He tossed a glance back and saw Keeza as she hopped lightly up onto the boulder.

For a moment, they simply stood together, surveying the woodlands.

It had been difficult for Keeza, but less so than he’d assumed. She had assimilated well to a life lived alongside him and the others of the Dektyr Tribe. In truth, she was a part of the tribe in all but name. He’d offered to give her the ceremony six days ago, but it was clear she still wasn’t quite ready for it, so he dropped it.

She was clearly very ready to continue joining him in his cave every night, though.

Jak had the impression that if it wouldn’t be seen as improper, she would join his bond if he asked her to. She seemed very enamored of him, and not just when they were on the bedding. She rarely left his side.

For a while he had taken it as anxiety that she would never admit to, and in the beginning, he figured that was true. She was among new people, and she came from a place where trust was a cruel joke, and often fatal. He was the only one she truly trusted, and so he was the one she stuck close to. But that was no longer the case.

She had not said it, but Jak suspected that Keeza loved him.

He had not said it...but he knew that he loved her as he loved the other women in his cave.

She was not ready for this, though, and given the nature of the situation they found themselves in, he was content to let it wait.

But she was also having some difficulty adjusting to life among so many people. She often explained that she was used to being alone, going off on her own for days at a time, and her emotional turmoil had always been endured in isolation. He thought that perhaps it would help to have someone there who loved her, but it only seemed to frustrate her.

She saw emotional turmoil as a weakness and she hated to be weak in front of him.

And Nessa.

Nessa...had not been helping things. It was also clear that his karn bond-mate was not handling everything all that well either. Nowadays, it was often just the three of them in their cave. Niri and Rylee had moved, Zora all but lived with them as well now, Azure now had her own cave she was recovering in, and Dawn was now sleeping away the cold months with all the rest of her dryad sisters in a secure, hidden location in Ara Forest.

Consequently, normally calming voices and relaxed personalities were gone, leaving only him, Nessa, and Keeza.

They had been fighting a lot, thankfully not physically, but Jak had to break up at least one fight a day, sometimes two or three. Keeza more or less admitted that her nerves were frayed, but he could tell Nessa was taking his interest in her more personally.

And it really didn’t help that when Keeza was feeling particularly petty she played that up.

Then, when Jak had to remind her that Nessa was his bond-mate but she was not, they started fighting. He hated it. He didn’t want to make anyone feel bad, but he also had to let Keeza know that his love of her did not invalidate or override his love of Nessa, and that while he was not playing favorites...Nessa was indeed his bond-mate, mated to him through a ritual of trust and love they both had openly committed to.

Mostly they were reasonable, but the situation was definitely wearing them all down.

“I see none,” Keeza murmured.

“Neither do I...how are you doing?” he asked.

“I did not start a fight with Nessa, if that is what you mean,” she replied, a little curtly.

“That isn’t what I meant, Keeza,” Jak said gently.

Keeza wasn’t looking at him, her face set in stone as she continued surveying the forest.

“Keeza,” he said gently.

Finally, slowly, she looked at him. “What?”

“I know this has been hard for you, and I know I’ve been asking a lot, and I want you to know that you have done a fantastic job so far.”

She looked away again, angry. “I am not a child who needs to be coddled,” she snapped.

“Keeza,” he said, more sternly this time. She looked at him again, reluctantly. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

Because something did seem to be wrong. She was harsher, sterner today. He thought it might be the extra strain they were all feeling due to the sudden lack of corrupted, but maybe it was something else.

Her expression remained stony, then finally softened. “I am scared,” she whispered, her voice so quiet her words were nearly lost to the wind. “I’m scared of losing this. You. Nessa. Zora and the others. The tribe. My...home. I spent my entire life never really feeling safe, but I feel safe here with you and your people. And now…”

“You won’t lose us, Keeza,” he said.

“You can’t know that,” she murmured, but didn’t resist when he took her hand.

“You’re right, I can’t. But I can believe it. I can believe in us, and I do. We’ll make this work. We will defeat our enemies, stop the corruption, and bring this island back to life. And then we will live our lives in glorious peace.”

“I really hope so,” she muttered, then she gave her head a shake. “I apologize. I know I’ve been difficult.”

“It’s all right, Keeza. It’s been very difficult for all of us.” He brought her hand up and kissed the back of it. “Just...stop provoking Nessa, please?”

She sighed. “I’m trying, but I’ll try harder. She...is struggling, too. There’s just something about her that provokes me. Usually in a good way, but when I’m stressed out…”

“I understand, and I appreciate your effort. Now, we should continue with our journey,” he said, letting go of her hand. “I don’t see any of them and we should take advantage of that.”

“What will we do?” she asked.

“Split up into groups, head into the forest, get the supplies,” he replied.

“I’m ready.”

Jak took one more look around, then hopped down off the boulder with Keeza to go and organize his warparty.

Our Own Way (Rewrite) Preview

Here are the first two chapters from my rewrite of Our Own Way!

You can read the third chapter on my Patreon if you are a 1$/month Patron, and you can read the following chapters as I post them in Early Access if you are a 3$/month Patron.


CHAPTER ONE

Freedom did not feel like it was supposed to.

As he drove down the rain-slicked streets of his city, beneath a fading October sunset and slate gray skies, Gabe Harris reflected on what exactly it was ‘supposed’ to feel like.

Words came to him.

Liberation.

Exaltation.

He would have settled for joy.

Up ahead, the light turned red and he rolled to a stop at a vacant intersection. He glanced at the clock mounted in his dash and saw that it wasn’t even six in the afternoon yet. Looking up through the saturated windshield, he could see that there was perhaps half an hour of daylight left.

And then the city would be shrouded in darkness.

Maybe it was just the gloomy atmosphere sapping him of his serenity.

The light turned green.

He resumed driving, looking forward to ending this process of moving all his crap from one location to another. If nothing else, the day had been taxing and he just wanted to lock himself behind a door and turn his brain off.

That was possible now.

That gave him a flicker of excitement, and something like hope.

Yes, he could go to his new apartment, walk inside, close and lock the door, and no one could come in if he didn’t want them to.

Well, that wasn’t completely true, but on a social level, he could tell everyone to screw off and they’d have to abide by it.

And he was in a mood to after the past…

Gabe tried looking for a suitable stopping point in his past.

The past six months? No, longer.

The past year? Certainly longer than that.

Decade would have to do.

“Damn,” he muttered as he almost missed the turn into his new parking lot.

Pulling in, he found a spot as close to his new apartment as possible and parked. Killing the engine, he popped the trunk and got out.

The rain had stopped.

Though the distant thunder that still rumbled occasionally meant more was coming. For a moment, Gabe looked up at the intense clouds that defined the sky above him. It wouldn’t have been out of place in some dramatic painting. He knew his predilection for storms meant that the far off thunder was more promise than threat.

As he began gathering the last of his things from the trunk, (just two boxes that, despite every effort simply would not fit during the previous trip back from his old place), Gabe was forced to admit that while freedom may not feel like how he had hoped, it did feel like something.

And that something felt a hell of a lot better than the past several years.

Balancing the boxes against his leg while resting it on the bumper, he slammed the trunk shut, then gripped them and headed towards his new apartment building.

Shouldering his way through the door and into the dimly lit interior, he was glad to find the stairwell and, as far as he could tell, hallways above and below, vacant. As a broke twenty-something attempting to do something probably really stupid with his life, he’d been forced to live in a not great part of town and already had been stared down by a few guys.

Heading downstairs, Gabe got into his basement apartment and, setting the boxes on the floor, he shut and locked the door against the world.

Finally. Alone.

He was alone.

For a long moment, he simply stood there and looked around the apartment. He had always been forced to live with at least one other person until this very moment. His family, his ‘friends’, coworkers, random roommates.

But here? Here was isolation.

And as an introvert living a life of forced interaction day in, day out, isolation was a gift.

Or was it?

Gabe sighed softly as he picked the boxes back up and moved them deeper into the studio apartment, knowing that if he didn’t do it now, he would leave it until tomorrow. Moving around the TV stand that was the only thing serving as a wall between the ‘living room’ and the ‘bedroom’ of his squalid home, he set the boxes on the dresser and started unpacking.

There wasn’t a whole lot there.

Books, mostly.

A small lamp.

A few games that hadn’t made it over during the previous trip.

Some clothes.

Most significant was his sound system. He set that up with great care. It might be little more than a docking port for an MP3 player and a pair of speakers, but when he’d finally bought it a year ago it had become invaluable to the preservation of his sanity.

Getting it plugged in behind the dresser, Gabe set it up, selected the first lo-fi playlist available, and let it play.

He actually felt himself relax, his entire body, as the music began.

After he finished unpacking the boxes and putting everything away, he broke them down and pushed them into the trashcan, then walked over and collapsed onto his sofa. It was more of a loveseat than a sofa, really.

He found himself making little mental amendments like that in his life all the time, almost as if he himself should come with an asterisk.

He had a car, but it was a shitty hatchback with little room.

He had a laptop, but it was eight years old.

He had a bank account, but it was in the red.

He had a phone, but…

Gabe pulled his phone out of his pocket and started at the glossy black rectangle bitterly.

But it had cost him goddamned six hundred dollars.

He was still regretting that one, even though he knew it was unreasonable. He was so sick and tired of having a crap phone, having crap everything, but when his phone had broke it was either get another crap one or actually upgrade.

And he’d finally had a little bit of money, so…

But the money was already gone. All gone now, in such a ridiculous gamble.

His mind swirled as he sat there on his loveseat, staring at his phone. Well, really staring at his reflection in it. Unhappy with that particular sight, he activated the screen. He laughed softly as he saw the date.

October 19th, 2023.

Today was supposed to be the first day in the next chapter of his life. The day he turned over a new leaf. The day he buckled down, got his shit together, and stopped being such a failure. The day it all changed.

It was a Thursday.

Somehow, it didn’t feel right. Who the hell revolutionized their life on a Thursday? In October, no less?

With a sigh, he unlocked the screen and called up the contacts, then stopped.

Why was he checking out his contacts?

Gabe looked around his apartment. It felt barren, and not just because he was poor and didn’t have a lot of furniture or stuff, nor that even if he wasn’t, he preferred a more minimalist style of living. It was another thing entirely.

He was lonely.

Isolation was a gift, but he was lonely.

He’d lived with people for his entire life, but he had often been alone.

With a weary sigh he began scanning the list. There were just about three dozen names there. For some reason his parents were still in there, and his brother. His last several roommates. A scattering of coworkers from the past several jobs he’d had.

Every name he looked at gave him a bad feeling in his stomach.

He wouldn’t call Jeremy, the guy had stolen from him.

He refused to call Peter, the guy was a psycho who couldn’t go out in public without starting a fight.

He definitely wasn’t looking to hang out with Lisa, not after that absolutely miserable single date they’d gone on.

God, what did he even still have Nick’s number!?

Gabe went through the list twice before realizing that there wasn’t even a single person he wanted to see. Was he that much of an antisocial introvert? It was possible, but as he began running through the list a third time, growing almost desperate in his bid for some kind of human contact, he kept coming up with memories, bad ones.

Memories of things he had decided he would no longer tolerate.

Abruptly, the screen cleared to show an incoming call from an unknown number.

For a moment, he stared at it, almost automatically deactivating the screen, because scam calls were out of control now, no matter how many times he blocked them. And declining the call told them there was a human being on the other end, so he’d just taken to deactivating the screen to shut his phone up and let it go to voicemail.

They didn’t even bother with automated messages anymore, not that he was complaining.

Except this number didn’t come with a tag that said SCAM or POLITICAL CALL or MARKETING CALL.

It came with no tag, and now that he was thinking about it, he actually recognized the number. Not enough to know who it was, but to know that he had once had this number in his memory. But who in the name of God could it be that he’d actually gone to the trouble of deleting?

Curiosity, and the crushing burden of loneliness, forced his hand.

He answered the call.

“Hello?”

A long pause came that made him start to think it was indeed a scam call, it had just slipped the net. Only...no, he could hear breathing and the faint sounds of traffic on the other end.

“...Gabe?”

A woman’s voice. Familiar, dauntingly familiar, but for a moment he grappled helplessly with his memories, trying to put a name to the voice.

It was a coworker, a former coworker, it had to be. He was sure of it.

Someone he’d talked with many times, but the only woman he really remembered talking with frequently was–

“Ellen?”

“Yeah, it’s Ellen. Um. Hi...this is you, right?” she asked uncertainly.

“Yeah. Yes. Sorry. It’s Gabe. I, uh, almost didn’t recognize your number.” He waited and another uncomfortable pause went by. He had the sense that something was wrong, he could hear it in her voice. “Are you okay?”

“Not really,” she murmured. Then, more resolutely: “No, I’m not okay.”

He felt a stab of icy panic grip him. “Are you hurt? Or is someone after you?”

“No, nothing like that. Sorry, I didn’t mean to freak you out. I’m, um, I’m safe. I’m not hurt. Just...I’m in a bad spot.” She paused again.

It sounded so alien, hearing her like this, especially when he became convinced that she had been crying. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he felt confident this was the truth.

Something in her tone.

“Can I help?” he asked finally.

She’d obviously called him for a reason.

“Yes.” Another uncomfortable hesitation. “Can I come to your place? I need a place to go. I need someone to talk to.”

“You can come over,” he replied.

“Thank you. I still remember where your place is, I shouldn’t be too far away.”

“I’ve just moved, actually. Well, I’ve moved like three times since the last time we spoke, but I’ve just moved again–let me text you my address.”

“That’d be great. Also...thanks.”

“Not a problem,” he replied.

“See you soon.”

“Yep.”

They said goodbye and he hung up and fired off a text with his address in it.

Half a minute later he got a response: Thanks again. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.

Gabe stared at the screen for a long moment, a strange sense of unreality settling over him like a smothering cloak.

Shit.

CHAPTER TWO

The biggest thing that allowed him to successfully clean his entire apartment in less than twenty minutes was that he was a little obsessive about some things, and had already organized and cleaned most of it by this point.

Gabe had, at some point, been hoping to have a girl over to his place. Now that he had a home that was his place, in that he didn’t have to share it with anyone else.

But definitely not so soon. Certainly not the actual first day.

As he worked, he thought of everything he knew about Ellen.

She was tall. She was beautiful. She was smart.

She was one of those women.

Most guys occasionally ran into a woman that left a deep impression, whether of romantic attraction or pure lust, sometimes both. Such a deep impression that they found themselves thinking of her even years later.

Ellen might actually be the woman in that regard.

Almost four years ago, they had gotten to know each other over the course of three months in what struck him as an extremely unlikely situation. For the most part, up until nine months ago, he’d spent the past few years working at a grocery store called Becky’s. Not long after he’d started working there back in late 2019, Ellen had taken on the job of accountant.

Due to luck, they both tended to work similar shifts and ended up sharing the break room more often than not. After a few awkward silences, Ellen had actually struck up a conversation with him and he’d found her easy to talk to.

What surprised him the most was that she found him easy to talk to.

They’d spoken dozens of times, had a lot of great and natural conversations that he remembered enjoying immensely.

And then, one day in December, she’d quit.

He had known it was coming. It had quickly become obvious that she was vastly overqualified for the position, and had taken it out of a sense of desperation after being let go from her previous accounting job.

She was clearly smart, sharp, and tenacious enough that he knew she wouldn’t be with them for that long.

Honestly, he was surprised it took as long as it had.

Why did she even have his number? He was thinking about that as he took a leak and then quickly washed his hands and face.

Oh right, his car had broken down and for a few weeks there she had occasionally given him rides to or from work as their schedule aligned, and it was easiest to coordinate via text. And now he remembered why he’d deleted her number.

Despite the fact that they’d actually got as far as finding each other on social media and talking more often than seemed likely, he felt there were too many differences between them to be real friends outside of work, and that he would never, in a million years, successfully ask her out.

To hold onto her number for that reason seemed futile.

And not just because she had been with someone else at the time.

She wasn’t just out of his league, she was out of his galaxy.

He might as well approach a movie star.

Gabe paused in drying his face as he thought he heard a car door shut somewhere nearby. He quickly finished up, then moved to the living room. Well, ‘living room’. It was all kind of the same in a studio apartment.

For just a moment, he wondered if he’d misheard, or if it was someone else.

Then he heard footsteps in the hallway outside and then a sharp knock on the door.

Stepping up to it, he looked through the peephole and saw a familiar knockout blonde waiting unhappily.

What could have happened to her?

He opened up the door and stepped back. “Hi.”

“Hello, Gabe,” she said, pausing briefly as she looked at him, a look of surprise passing over her face. “You look...different.”

“Do I?” he replied, looking down at himself reflexively.

“Uh, yeah. I mean, it’s a good different.”

She came in and he closed the door behind her. He found himself thinking something similar, though he didn’t voice it at all. She looked miserable, her eyes red and puffy, almost certainly from crying, her face very pale.

And she definitely had put on some weight, but certainly not in a bad way.

She really filled out her jeans even more…

Needed to focus. She was upset, a bad thing had happened to her, and she, for whatever reason, had decided to come to him for help.

And he was going to help her.

“I’m not sure what it is,” he replied. “I guess I stopped clean-shaving, so I don’t look so freaking young anymore. I think.”

“Yeah, that definitely is some of it,” she murmured, standing there staring at him. “You’ve lost some weight, and...I think it’s the t-shirt, too. I can’t remember ever seeing you not in a button-down and that fucking apron they made everyone wear. The shirt looks good on you.”

Was she hitting on him?

No, couldn’t be, she was just being nice.

“Thanks,” he murmured. “Uh...what happened?”

Whatever small smile had been building on her face collapsed and a look of anger mixed with abject misery swept across her beautiful, pale features.

“My life collapsed. Again,” she replied, walking over to his loveseat and sitting down heavily.

“I’m sorry,” he said, sitting beside her.

“Yeah, so am I...fuck. Where do I even begin? My fiance–” she paused, grimaced, glanced down briefly at her bare left ring finger, “–ex-fiance, cheated on me.”

“Holy shit. I’m sorry, Ellen.”

“Yeah. Fucking fucker.” She reached up and pushed her long, pale blonde hair back, then suddenly heaved an irritated sigh. “Hold on,” she muttered, going into her purse and coming out with a hair-tie. Gathering up her hair, she put it into a ponytail.

“There,” she said. Ellen opened her mouth again, but no words came out. She looked at him suddenly. “Is this too weird?” she asked suddenly. “I know we haven’t actually spoken in, what...God, three, no Christ, four years now?”

“Just about, yeah,” he replied. “And no, it’s not too weird.”

“I’m sorry we stopped talking. I’m just...bad at social media, and things got really busy with my new job–”

“It’s really fine, Ellen.”

She seemed to relax after studying him briefly and apparently determining he wasn’t lying. “Thanks,” she said. “Uh...so yeah, I, shit, where do I start? Sorry, I’m a goddamned mess right now. Just–shit.” She rubbed her eyes.

“Take your time,” Gabe replied, finding himself thinking ‘how in the name of God could anyone cheat on her!?’.

“Thanks,” she said softly. Taking a deep breath, she held it for a few seconds, then exhaled slowly. “Okay. I began suspecting something was up like a month ago. I’ve been cheated on before, so this time around, the signs became more obvious. He was more distant, he wanted to go out on his own more often and was evasive about what was doing, where he’d been, who he’d seen. And I didn’t want to be that woman–the one who gets all paranoid and jealous and clingy–so I told myself I was just being paranoid…

“Only I wasn’t. Two weeks ago, after a lot of bullshit I finally successfully lobbied my workplace to let me go back to work-from-home. Which is a whole other thing I need rant about. I thought Blake would be happy, more time together, less time spent commuting to work, pissing away money on gas, all that shit. But he was annoyed, he was practically mad at me when I told him, but he wouldn’t really say why.”

She paused, frowning intensely, looking off to the side as her eyes unfocused briefly. Then she blinked a few times and returned her attention to him.

“I kept getting more paranoid and finally, well, he left his phone at the condo today. And I knew his code, I’d seen him punch it in a few times, and yes, I became that woman who goes through her fiance’s phone. But I was right, goddamnit. I was right he was seeing some fucking slut–I found all these sexts and nudes from this one girl. Some fucking college bitch–”

Ellen broke off again, hugging herself suddenly and leaning forward, clenching her teeth. “I found a video of them fucking in our fucking bed! I was so angry I vomited. Barely made it to the kitchen sink. I just–I grabbed some of my shit and threw it in my car and started driving. I didn’t even know where the hell I was going. Just...away. I had this plan, I figured he’d call me. He’d realize his phone wasn’t on him and come back home, see I wasn’t there, get paranoid, because he was getting paranoid, projecting, that cheating fuck!”

She clenched her hands into fists and a tremor of fury ran through her.

“Ellen, do you want a hug?” he asked suddenly.

He couldn’t stand to see her this miserable and felt severely ill-equipped to handle it, but he wasn’t going to just not try.

She looked at him, the surprise plain on her face, and then her expression resolved. “You know what? Yes, I do want a hug. Badly.”

She scooted closer to him on the loveseat and they embraced, hugging. Tightly, actually. She ended up squeezing him so hard it hurt, but he didn’t say anything.

Even when she suddenly started crying.

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” she managed, tried to say something else, then let out another sob.

Gabe felt like he’d been tossed into a situation he had very little prep for or knowledge on how to handle. So he just went with it, doing what made sense, rubbing her back as she squeezed him and cried on his shoulder.

“It’ll be okay, Ellen,” he said, not even sure if that was true, but he knew, on some deep level, that it was the kind of thing she needed to hear in that moment. “You’ll be okay. I’m here for you.”

He kept rubbing her back, trying to ignore the fact that her breasts were pressed against his chest. This was about the absolute worst time to be having sexual thoughts, and he was glad to find that it was actually surprisingly easy to push those thoughts away.

She cried for another few moments, and then fell silent.

Finally, she sniffed heavily and released him, sitting back up. “Thank you,” she murmured, wiping at her eyes. “Ugh, God, I thought I was already cried out, now I’m all gross again. Um, can I use your bathroom?”

“Of course,” he said, pointing deeper into the apartment. “Last door in the row.”

“Thanks,” she murmured, standing.

She disappeared into the bathroom and he heard her blow her nose, then running water, and finally a moment later she reappeared, her face washed, leaving her looking a little more refreshed. She sat back down beside him.

“Uh...that was embarrassing,” she muttered. “I’m sorry. Shit. I’m realizing that I’m just showing up on your doorstep basically out of the blue after years of no contact, ranting and raving about my pathetic life, and now I’m crying all over you…”

“Ellen, it’s fine. I’m here to listen, to help if I can. I want to help you.”

She looked at him when he said that, he expression changing, like she was somehow appraising him. Finally, she just gave her head a small shake, like she was trying to dislodge a thought.

“I appreciate it,” she said. “I guess I should finish my story. I was driving around, trying to cool off, failing, crying. He called, and this calm came over me. I was going to play it cool, try to get him to maybe admit to it, but as soon as I heard his voice–it was like seeing red. I lost it, screaming at him. He tried to deny it, briefly, but it was pretty obvious he was fucked. He was found out. Tried to defend himself, told me it was my fault, pulling out all the stops. I sucked in bed, I’m getting fat, I’m awful at giving head, just everything he could think of.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, that’s awful,” Gabe said.

“Yeah. I told him to fuck off, it’s over, hung up, drove around for a while longer and then just...cried my fucking eyes out. And then, eventually, I was cried out, or so I thought, and I started thinking of people I could call on, places I could go, because I had to go somewhere.”

“And you chose...me?” he asked.

“Yeah. I did,” she murmured. She began to say something else, but her stomach growled. Rather loudly. “God, I’m fucking starving. I had breakfast, and then...I vomited. And then I haven’t eaten anything since then.”

Gabe stood up. “I’ll put something...aw dammit.”

“What?” she asked.

“I don’t have any food.”

“Wait, like, literally no food?” she asked.

“Basically. I just moved in.”

She looked around. “Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, wow. Now I feel bad for just showing up while you’re in the middle of getting settled.”

“Don’t feel bad,” he replied.

Her stomach growled again. “How about I order a big, giant pizza, and wings, and soda, and we enjoy that for dinner? Because I could use that after today. And I’ll pay.”

He hesitated, but only briefly. What choice did he have? There was really no food here, and he was negative in the bank. “I accept.”

She laughed. “Okay then.”

Ellen pulled out her phone.

Raw VII Preview

Making good progress on Raw VII! Here’s the first chapter.

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It was in that moment Jak realized he had never experienced real terror.

He’d faced down horrifyingly lethal monsters and an army of karn and certain death from a dozen different ways, but the only thing that had even come close to touching how he felt right now was during his first few days, when he heard Niri scream his name in fear, calling for help.

Everything hurt. His head, his body, his limbs, everything ached and the sick feeling was lingering, but none of that mattered right now.

Move!” Jak yelled as he raced forward towards his village.

It sounded like madness up ahead.

More screaming, more crying, more horror.

The others hurried to keep up, following in his wake through the dead forest and the snowfall.

Jak wasn’t sure at what point he transitioned over into his heightened state, but he knew that he arrived at his village in it and took everything in with an awful clarity.

It was like stepping into a nightmare.

There was blood in the air, the fresh-spilled blood of his tribemates, and something was burning that wasn’t a cooking fire. One of the nearest huts had collapsed into a heap of raw materials. People ran screaming from the…

Corrupted. He realized at once that he was seeing a corrupted being, but not like the others. This was a corruption of the magical kind, what was clearly an instant process. He felt terror rip at him once more as he felt a fresh wave of pain roll through his body.

Was the corruption now inside of him?

His bond-mates?

Jak shook that off. Right now, it didn’t matter, he couldn’t do anything about it. But he could do something about this situation in front of him, even if it was going to be brutally painful. He had somewhere to be, something to do, and several someones to save.

Energy burning within him, Jak drew and threw two knives in rapid succession, his movements smooth and fluid. Each one buried itself in the eye of a recently corrupted tribemate who were both in the process of attacking their non-corrupted brethren.

There was chaos in the village, over a dozen different small skirmishes having broken out. Jak drew his adze and moved.

He moved like a beast made for the hunt in its absolute purest form.

Everything else was slow around him, and it was easy, so worryingly easy, to run up and bring his blade down or around in a tight arc, removing tribemate after tribemate from life with a spray of blood. And that only made it worse as he did it.

Knowing he had to do this, that there was no obvious way to bring them back, knowing they would kill and kill and kill if he didn’t kill them, didn’t help ease the agony.

His adze tore into a man’s neck, a hunter who had joined fairly recently. His name was Ket. His eyes were full of black light and his face was smeared with blood. He went down to join the dead in the dirt and Jak moved on.

He pushed himself faster and harder, knowing that every instant he had not completed this task was another instant that someone could, and likely would, die. And he moved ever forward through the huts towards his cave, hunting desperately for his lovers.

Every person he came to, every face he saw, he feared the worst.

But finally, as he saved another tribemate from a pair of corrupted closing in on her, Jak hurried out between two huts that would finally put him in view of his own cave, and there he saw Rylee. She was healing someone and Niri was standing over her, a bone blade in each hand, looking pained but fierce.

“Jak!” she cried.

The relief he felt was immense. They were still alive, still fighting.

His relief didn’t last long as he heard a shout come from behind him. Turning back around, he saw that the fire from earlier had grown.

“Jak, what is happening!?” Niri yelled.

“I don’t know!” he called back. “Keep guarding Rylee!”

“All right!”

She’d hardly gotten her response out before he was off and running again, his ability still burning so brightly in him, forcing him to action. He dodged in among the huts, his absolute need to help his tribemates burning as furious in his head as the power that thundered within him. Jak dodged between two huts and saw a small group of people had coalesced near the fire, trying to handle the situation.

Some were helping the wounded, some were trying to put out the fire, some were standing guard against further corrupted.

There weren’t enough.

“Get the wounded to my cave!” he snapped, appearing beside them. “Sena!” he yelled, staring at the fire. “Here! Now!”

Jak had no idea if she was here, he only knew that he had no obvious way to deal with the fire. It had spread to three huts now and looked to be getting worse. He sensed movement to his left and saw Sena running towards him through the falling snow.

“Can you deal with the fire?” he asked.

“I...I think so,” she replied, studying it uncertainly.

“Try! I have to–”

He reacted on pure instinct, barely registering the sound of heavy paws beating the ground in rapid approach. Twisting to his right, he saw a wolf, eyes full of darkness, frothing at the mouth, coming right towards him.

It leaped into the air, jaws open wide.

Jak snapped forward, driving his fist into the corrupted wolf’s mouth without thinking about it. His fist parted the top of the wolf’s head from the rest of it, sending it flying through the air. He jerked forward in the next instant, hitting the wolf’s corpse with his shoulder and deflecting it away from Sena.

It hit the ground and rolled a few times, twitching occasionally as blood burst out of its ruined head.

More were coming out of the forest, dark, low shapes advancing on him through the snowfall.

“Deal with the fire!” he snapped, and ran forward.

This was getting worse faster than he could deal with it.

No. He could handle it.

He’d handled worse.

Probably.

Jak moved, settling into the flow of combat as four wolves advanced on him with a sinister grace absent from the other corrupted. What were the rules with these? Were they the same? Were they even corrupted?

It didn’t matter. They were a threat.

They needed to end.

He hurled his short spear in a single motion, didn’t even watch it punch through the skull of the nearest wolf, simply knew that it would in the heat of the moment. He was already drawing another thin bone knife and throwing it overhand at the eye of the next wolf. It collapsed, twitching violently, as Jak fell upon the others with his adze.

They were dead in a matter of a few short, hard chops.

But even as the blood was landing around him, darkening the snow that had fallen and gathered, he saw more wolves emerging from the treeline. And there were other creatures behind them. He saw a giant spider, a few uncertain human or elven shapes, and at least two blade-toothed tigers. All of them with glowing dark eyes.

Something was wrong.

They were moving with too much purpose, too coordinated.

“Jak! I can’t stop the fire!” Sena yelled.

He glanced back briefly over his shoulder and saw the fire was spreading further, despite Sena’s efforts. Several of his tribemates were backing away from the flames, looking around anxiously. It was falling apart like dry earth in his grasp.

Something whirled through the air out of the village to his left, sailed past him, and wrapped around the legs of a wolf, tripping it up. Almost at the same moment, a spear came flying through the falling snow and punched through the skull of one of the blade-toothed tigers.

Nessa, Keeza, and Zora appeared, jogging forward to join him.

“Nessa! Zora! I need you to get with Rylee and Niri and get everyone out of here!” he said. Then he raised his voice, calling to the village. “Take the wounded and get to the North Outpost as fast as you can!”

“I’m not leaving you here!” Nessa snapped immediately.

“Nessa, I need you to do this.” He tossed a quick, impatient glance at the corrupted creatures encroaching on them. They were getting closer. “I’ll stay here and hold them off. It has to be you leading them, Nessa, you’re the greatest warrior in the tribe after me.”

She stared at him, her chest and face splashed with blood from the fighting and sprinkled with ash from the growing fire.

“You had better be there, fast,” she said finally.

“I will, please make sure you get everyone out. Check the caves!”

“I’m on it, come on, Zora.”

The two women immediately began passing out instructions to those in the nearby area, organizing them with the speed that came from a well-managed village and competent leadership. Nessa fell quickly into her element, pointing and snapping out orders.

Their tribemates moved hastily to follow, grateful for a clear goal.

He didn’t know if the North Outpost was safe, but it was the second safest location, and it was farther from the Barrens.

Of course, he realized, in a sudden wave of fresh horror, that he had no idea how far this...spell? Whatever it was, how far it had reached.

“What about me?” Keeza asked, stepping up to his side.

“You owe us nothing,” Jak replied, eyeing the corrupted.

He hurled another bone knife and dropped one of the corrupted humans, someone he tried not to recognize in that moment.

“Oh yes, let me just go back to my cave in all this!” Keeza snapped.

She picked up a nearby spear and threw it with amazing accuracy, punching it right through the skull of another corrupted man.

“If you’re willing to help, then I’ll take it. Help me kill them! Buy my people time!”

And then he was off, a club in one hand, the adze in the other.

More corrupted were spilling from the forest.

How many were there?!

He ignored the question as soon as he posed it, knowing that it didn’t really matter. He would fight on for as long as he had to.

And he did, moving among the corrupted with a weapon in each hand, striking with blows and attacks that killed in an instant. Even freshly made corrupted couldn’t stand against him, at least not one on one.

Time passed, blood flowed, the village burned.

Jak’s own body was burning up already from using his ability so soon after the last time. He knew the only reason he wasn’t suffering a lot more was because he’d managed to get at least some rest in between then and now.

This couldn’t go on forever, though.

He felt his hope returning to him, though, as he saw his people moving with purpose. And Keeza. She was a warrior in her own right, and as he watched her tear through half a dozen new corrupted wolves, he suddenly wondered about his assessment of Nessa being second only to him.

Well, that was a thought he’d keep firmly to himself.

He kept going, arms swinging back and forth, delivering devastating blows with the hardened club and lethal chops with the adze, cleaving through flesh and bone like water. He put his great strength and speed to use, and Keeza did hers, and they killed and slaughtered and murdered.

And still the corrupted came out of the forest.

Enough time had to have passed. He no longer heard the voices of the others. He no longer heard anything but the roar of the fire and the awful sounds of the ever-advancing corrupted.

“Keeza!” he shouted, yanking his adze free of another skull. “We have to go! Follow me!”

“Go!” she replied, disengaging and running towards him.

He turned and ran into the burning village, moving clear of the fire that had taken over half a dozen huts now, and tried not to feel the rage and horror that was building steadily in him. The rage and horror that grew worse with each body he stepped over.

This was their home. They’d spent over a season building it, living in it, making it theirs.

And now they were forced out by impossible circumstances.

They got around the burning huts and came to the cave entrances.

Jak pointed to a section of the rock between the two entrances. “Climb!”

“What are you doing?” Keeza replied.

“I need to make sure everyone got out!”

“Jak, let me help you,” she said after an instant’s hesitation.

“No, just get out of here and get to the North Outpost,” he replied. “I know you know where it is.”

She sighed. “I’ll climb, but I’m waiting for you up there.”

“Fine. Go. Hurry,” he replied.

Jak hurried first into his own cave, still burning through that energy. He couldn’t drop out of his heightened state until he was clear of the village and somewhere relatively safe. Having Keeza around would help with that. She could watch out for him while he got his bearings back.

He looked around his cave and found that no one remained. He took a moment to snatch up a new batch of throwing knives, a trio of short spears, and a fresh waterskin. Looking around, he could see that the women had already grabbed whatever important things they could.

His eyes caught on Niri’s nearest painting.

He felt his whole body shudder with rage but pushed it away yet again. No time, never any time to feel, only to do.

He raced back outside and into the communal cave. Running all the way to the back of the tunnel, he checked the spaces where people might be hiding. Nothing in the back chambers, but he could see a lot of packed away food and supplies. He hoped it survived the fires, but there was nothing to be done for it now.

Running back into the central sleeping area, he looked around and his heart skipped a beat as he saw a lone figure laying near the center of the room. He hurried over, already seeing that they were still breathing, and dropped into a crouch.

“Ezzi…” he muttered, seeing she’d taken a blow to the head.

She’d probably wandered in here during the fighting, fleeing or maybe trying to grab something important, and passed out from the wound.

Scooping the slim elf up, he hurried back outside.

The corrupted were among the village now, and...they were keeping their distance from the flames. They were definitely smarter, a lot smarter.

And they looked right at him as he emerged, roared, and began coming for him.

A rock fell from above, hitting the nearest creature, another wolf, cracking its skull.

“Jak! Come on!” Keeza snapped.

It wasn’t easy, but he managed to clamber up the rock face one-armed. The other arm held Ezzi securely, slung over one shoulder.

Keeza took her as he neared the top.

“Come on,” Jak said, “we have to get somewhere safe and rest a moment.”

“Fine,” Keeza replied, “lead the way.”

They hurried off into the frigid darkness, snow still falling in huge, silent flakes around them, oblivious to everything that had just transpired.

Raw VI Preview

Raw VI is well underway! It’s about 1/3 finished as of right now, and I’m on track with a late March release.

Here is chapter one.

The second chapter can be viewed here on my Patreon if you are a 1$/month Patron.

The third chapter, and subsequent chapters, can be viewed here if you are a 3$/month Patron.


“Did you know?” Jak asked as he picked up the Star Crystal.

“That he was a magic-user? Yes,” the old warrior replied quietly.

Jak laughed bitterly. He stood and held the crystal up to the pale sunlight, studying it briefly.

“I’ve never seen one so powerful,” the warrior said.

“Neither have I,” Jak lied, placing the crystal securely in one of his pouches. He turned to face the older man. “I didn’t catch your name.”

“Brentak, tribemaster.”

“Well, Brentak, tell me: what was your role to your former tribemaster?”

“Body guard and advisor. Technically I was the Guide. I relayed the tribemaster’s wishes to the rest of the tribe,” Brentak replied.

Jak listened carefully as he looked out over the mountainside village. He listened for lying, for any untruths the man might be inclined to speak.

But Brentak’s voice was steady, his stance sure.

“I get the impression that there was more to it,” he said finally.

“Yes.”

Jak turned to face Brentak finally, studying the man. He was large and built, his body made of slabs of muscle. He had an air of efficiency, even though the hair in his beard was mostly gray and wrinkles gathered at the corners of his eyes and mouth.

He was old, but he still stood straight, and his movements were quick and decisive.

Jak imagined he would be a formidable foe.

It was obvious that the others respected him and looked up to him, relied on him even. While Jak had been doling out orders and asking questions, getting a general sense of the situation and, for the moment, ensuring that Tolvar on the island knew the war was over, at least with his tribe and the elves, they had all looked to Brentak to speak for them.

“I’m going to be relying on you Brentak,” he said after a long moment. “I’m not going to be like your old tribemaster. I cannot stay here and watch over everything. I have another tribe to run, I have an entire island to bring peace to, other villages to talk with, maintain alliances with.”

“You speak with them personally?” Brentak replied, a small amount of surprise breaking through his calm.

“I do. I spend as much time away from my village as I do in it. Sometimes more. I ensure that the important things get done by doing them myself. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I killed your idiot tribemaster. So...what else did you do? You want to tell me something.”

“Yes. I served as a...guardian, between Toval and the rest of the tribe.”

“How so?” Jak asked, curious despite everything.

Brentak looked uncomfortable for the first time, casting a quick, unhappy glance at the dead man beside them. “He wasn’t always like this. He was scared in the beginning, he became tribemaster young. But I helped him. Guided him. He grew into a decent leader, but he was too taken with whims and anger and, later, hatred. And greed.”

He sighed mournfully. “I did what I could, but at some point I learned that he only heard what he wanted to. And he grew vengeful with those who told him what he did not want to hear. I should have killed him at some point, but...I couldn’t. He reminded me of his father, for better or for worse, and his father was my best friend. When he died, a piece of my heart died with him. I couldn’t let that go.”

Slowly, he looked out over the mountainside. “And we all suffered for my weakness.”

“That won’t happen again, will it?” Jak asked.

Brentak’s eyes returned to his own, filled now with a kind of cold, hard strength. “No. It will not. If I feel that you are leading us to our doom, I will challenge you. I know you will kill me, but I will challenge you.”

Jak nodded. “Good. It should be that way. And you won’t have to. This island must come to peace, or we will all die.”

Brentak nodded. “I see that now.”

“I’m not sure if you do,” Jak murmured. “You know the Barrens?”

“I have heard of them,” he replied. “We all have. That is the Tolvar legacy.”

“They are growing. And they will keep growing unless we find some way to fix Uzek’s Transgression.”

Brentak sneered unconsciously at that, but it came and went quickly. “Uzek,” he murmured.

“Do you know anything that might help us? Is there anyone who might know what exactly happened?”

But the big warrior was shaking his head. “No. Our control and eventual outlaw of magic was not done completely out of hatred. Everyone who knew what happened that day in any real detail either died there at the Transgression, or disappeared elsewhere on the island.”

Jak frowned. “What do you mean? Where? Who?”

“I don’t know where,” Brentak replied. “But for some years after, our most knowledgeable magic-user remained by our side.”

“I thought that was Uzek.”

“No. Uzek was powerful, yes, but it was Rall who knew just about everything about magic. He was old even when I was young. He knew old secrets. He had a tribe within a tribe. His inner circle. His...Revek.”

“Revek?”

“That is what they called themselves. The Revek. They served magic, studied it, twisted it. He grew more secretive, more obsessive. I eventually learned that he was still playing with death magic, even after we agreed to forbid it. I almost killed him. I should have. But he was very powerful, he and his inner circle. We settled on exile, but in reality, they chose to leave. I have no idea where they are now, or even if they are still alive.”

He paused, then looked at Jak more intently. “But you say the Barrens, they grow?”

“Every day. Slowly, but surely. They will eventually consume the whole island. An island of death, where no plants will grow, and sickness will reign.”

“I did not know that,” he whispered. “How can we stop it?”

“That’s precisely what I’m trying to determine right now. That was why I did this: so we could stop the fighting and focus on the saving and the healing. And now I must turn my attention to the karn.”

“I do not believe you will succeed with them as you have here,” Brentak muttered.

“Don’t be so sure. You are aware that the embyr control the karn, control their minds? Force them to fight?” he asked.

The warrior nodded. “Yes. But I also know that the others fight of their own free will.”

“Not all of them. I have made a lasting peace with some of them. Dozens and dozens of karn live among my people, your former brethren and some elves as well, in Avat’s Forest. We do not fight. We share meals and caves, hunt and battle together, as friends.”

Brentak stared at him for a long time. “I will have to see it to believe it,” he said finally.

“I will gladly have you see it. But tell me of your war with the karn.”

He sighed. “It goes poorly. You know of our villages?”

“I know Fair Field, obviously. I know that Wetstone is nestled up against the northern edge of the central lake.”

“Shadow Lake,” he said.

“Interesting. I know of another two villages, farther east, towards the embyr’s territory.”

“The first is Gather Village. That is where our food here mostly comes from. They hunt, they fish, they forage, and bring back the excess here. Otherwise, we would not survive. Farther is the Verdant Valley, and Verdant Village. That valley is lush with life, overflowing with it. And with slate, clay, good trees, everything we need to survive. It is also too close to embyr villages. We fight the karn constantly there. Sometimes they make it to Gather or Wetstone. They have many, many karn. They have been breeding them.”

Jak shook his head, horrified at the thought. Being mind-enslaved was bad enough, but that?

He had to end this as quickly as possible. His mind was already working. He’d been thinking in the background of all this on how to end the conflict with the karn, and he thought he had an idea. It was an unstable one, and relied too much on luck, but after everything, it was all he had to go on.

“I have an order for you to carry out,” Jak said.

Brentak straightened up. “Yes, tribemaster.”

“Send a runner to Verdant. Tell them to abandon it. Take as much as they can carry and flee to Wetstone and Gather. Reinforce there.”

“But...the karn will have it then.”

“I know, but not for long. I believe I can find a way to end the embyr’s control over the karn. And once I do that, I can unite the karn and bring us all to peace. Then we can retake Verdant.”

Brentak looked dubious. “How long do you think it will take? The cold days approach. Even now, I’m not sure if we have enough to survive them…”

“Not long,” Jak replied. “I understand your concern, but the karn have clearly bled you nearly dry. How many have you lost against them? Against the elves? Against my own tribe? How many did Toval send to their deaths?”

“Too many,” Brentak muttered bitterly.

“Exactly. I know you are most familiar with fighting, with taking by force, but as I just proved, there is another way. I could have waged war on this village, killing everyone here, and losing dozens, maybe hundreds of my own people in the process.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t. Because I want to preserve life. There will always be a need to fight, always the struggle of survival, but we need not wage it against each other. I have proven we can work together, make it easier, safer.”

Brentak still seemed uncomfortable.

“I know this isn’t easy for you. I don’t want to force you to do my bidding, Brentak. You strike me as a smart and honest warrior whose concern for his people outweighs his concern for himself. So, as one warrior trying to watch out for his people to another, I am asking you to trust me. Because I need your help with this. And the decisions that we make over the next few days will determine if they live or die,” Jak said, gesturing to the village below them.

Brentak stood staring at the village for a long moment. His expression might have been carved from stone.

Slowly, it softened, very gently, almost imperceptible.

He turned back fully to Jak and straightened up to his full height.

“I will do as you ask, tribemaster.”

“Thank you, Brentak. And whatever excess was being stored in there,” he said, gesturing now to the caves he had found Toval in, “give it to the people. Feed them. Heal them. Shelter them. I got the impression Toval was keeping a lot to himself.”

“He was,” Brentak said quietly. “And I will. What will you do?”

“I must speak with my own people. But I will send help. It’s obvious that this mountainside is no longer habitable. If they stay here during the cold days, too many of them will die. So, I will go put together a group to come bearing supplies to help them survive for now, and I will find them other places to live. Safer places.”

The warrior nodded. He hesitated, briefly.

“A question?” Jak asked.

“Yes...do you truly think you can make peace with the karn?”

“I do. Once I find a way to break the embyr’s hold over them, Talon will help me unite them.”

Brentak’s face lit up with surprise and joy. “That old miserable bastard is still alive?!”

“He is...do you know him?”

“Yes!” He laughed and shook his head. “We fought. More than once. He...is an honorable karn. I never thought I would grow to respect a karn, but...I would much like to see him again.”

“I’m sure he’d like to see you. I’ll tell him of you.”

“I would appreciate it greatly.”

“All right, I have to go now. Get them used to the idea of leaving the mountainside, living elsewhere on the island, and, if at all possible, living alongside elves, magic-users, and possibly karn.”

“That last part will be difficult, but the first? We have known that this mountainside is dead for a few seasons now. Many are ready to leave. Many hunger. They will be sorry to leave, but not that sorry. Though, you should address them.”

Jak nodded. “That’s a good idea.”

He focused as he stepped back over to the Blood Stone, where the curved sheer wall of rock would help carry his voice to the others in the village below. His mind kept wanting to go in other directions. There was so much to do!

He noticed several people looked up immediately as he stepped into place.

“My new tribemates!” he called, and then everyone looked up at him. “I must depart to other parts of the island. As I have looked out over this village, the truth has been revealed to me: this village will not bear you through the winter. We must find new land for you live in. I will speak with the other tribes, and we will find safe places for you and your families to live and weather the cold days! While I am gone, Brentak will speak for me. Prepare yourselves! I will return!”

It sounded so strange, hearing his voice echoing over the village like that. He worried briefly about how the villagers would take it, but another cheer of ‘Tribemaster!’ sounded.

They seemed happy.

He could understand that. This place was bleak. It looked stripped, barren. There was hardly any plant life. Everything was rock and mud.

Once it had been a happy home, but no longer.

Now, they needed to adapt and make hard changes, just like everyone else on the island.

Jak walked back over to Brentak. “Their lives are in your hands while I’m gone,” he said.

He didn’t want to cut it so fine as to outright tell him that, but just as he was asking for trust, Jak was also putting a lot of trust in the old warrior.

“As it has been for many seasons,” Brentak replied easily. “Don’t worry, I will handle them well. We know each other, we trust each other. And they are happy. We’ve been aching for change for many seasons now. And it has finally come.”

Jak nodded and clapped him once on the shoulder, then began making his way down through the village.

The man was right.

For better or for worse…

Change had come to them all.

Raw V Preview

Raw V is finally in production! Here is the first chapter.

You can read the second chapter right here if you are a 1$/month Patron.

You can read the third chapter (and future chapters) right here if you are a 3$/month Patron.


The frigid wind that blew in off the tormented slate-gray waters felt like a dark omen as Jak made his way down the rocky shoreline.

It felt like he was always drawn back to this particular spot, as surely as the sun was drawn to the far horizon at the end of each day. This unassuming stretch of rock and earth, ever-changing beneath the eternal waves of the sea, tucked away on one corner of the island he now called home.

Jak paused in his determined strides down the shore as he reached a specific spot.

This was where it had all started for him.

His new life. His new self.

Though it had been a season since he’d awoken here, and it looked different than what his memory told him, he somehow knew that this was the spot where he had regained consciousness with a giant crow somewhere nearby.

A sharp caw drew his attention.

He looked up and ahead. The giant crow regarded him with a dark gaze from a tree branch that sagged under its weight.

Those eyes held warning.

In every other instance, he had heeded this warning.

But not today.

Jak resumed his walk, making his way towards the crow, preparing himself for the worst. He had no idea what would happen. It could be anything.

But he had to know.

Perhaps this was a bad time for it. The sun had risen and fallen fifteen times since he’d solidified his alliance with the elves of Ara Forest. And since he had murdered their leader. That was something he had grown to regret less as time had gone on.

Most dangers came from the outside. Creatures, rival tribes, bad weather, sickness.

But the worst dangers often came from within.

And the more he thought on it, the more Jak felt that a bad leader might be among the most lethal of all perils a tribe might face. It seemed to matter little if they were incompetent, lazy, greedy, or cruel, as it all amounted to the same thing.

A dying tribe.

After that, the war against the Tolvar had truly begun.

Jak had hardly been home to his village and his bond-mates since then. As a warrior, as the warrior on this island, as far as he knew, the responsibility to plan and personally lead assaults fell to him. And so he had fought, and battled, and bled, and killed.

From Ara Forest, over to Talon’s Hilltop, and down along the border between Avat’s Forest and the Barrens, he worked with every single ally he had gained so far to make the land safe, eliminate or drive off any hostile tribesmen, and then, more recently, stab out at the Tolvar. He’d led a dozen warparties over the last four days, assaulting any Tolvar they found, pushing the Tolvar’s territory back with a firm hand.

He didn’t like all the killing, but it was coming easier to him these days.

The crow let out another sharp caw, this one louder, and flapped its huge wings. Jak kept walking, making for the end of the coastline.

Something was there, something important, he was sure of it.

“I’m not stopping today,” Jak said as he approached the crow.

He expected it to attack him, and he didn’t want to kill it, the bird felt almost like a part of the tribe at this point.

But it did not attack.

It simply cawed again and then took to flight, flapping off in the direction he was headed.

Interesting.

Jak continued, picking up his pace, keeping an eye out for any threats even though he hadn’t actually run into anything living in this area save for the crow.

As interested as he was in what lay in the far corner of the island, he was more interested in what had initially pushed him out his village so soon after coming back.

The mysterious tall blue figure.

At this point, he was convinced she was real. He’d been asking around and several people had related seeing a tall blue-skinned figure, usually described as a woman, but often no more than a fleeting glimpse.

Somehow, in some way, the crow, the desolate corner of the island, and the blue woman were all connected.

Jak had never truly gone in search of her, and he was willing to leave it, but less so now. The situation on the island was moving inexorably towards some sort of end, things coming faster now, like a river during a heavy rain.

And that river was more dangerous.

Things that might not have caused problems before might do so under such conditions, and Jak was convinced he could no longer afford to put off the mystery.

Whatever this being was, they seemed very magical.

He wasn’t sure if this woman truly was a Spirit of the Forest, but that had started him down a path of thought that led him to where he was right now. When he had gone in search of the nymphs for the first time, that intentional investigation had drawn them out.

Perhaps something similar would happen with the blue woman.

As Jak neared the end of the rocky area, he saw that it reconnected with the curious trench that ran parallel to the shoreline. Coming into it, he looked back along its length. That trench had always bothered him, something about it seemed oddly unnatural. At times he’d wondered if it was the result of some very old spell gone wrong.

In his mind’s eye, he saw a massive fireball being released, an absolutely huge one, larger than a boulder, and racing down where the trench now was. He turned around, looking to where the trench ended. It was in the deader part of that corner of the island, and there was a rise in the land, almost as if it had been pushed up from underneath somehow.

Only a handful of skeletal trees lay scattered around.

He’d never been this close before.

Jak could feel something faint on the air, something magical that seemed to hum just beyond the edge of hearing.

What could it possibly be?

All of his thoughts were interrupted as he abruptly became aware of the fact that he was being watched. Spinning around, looking back across the trench to his forest, he caught a flash of blue among the trees.

He took off, sprinting across the trench and plunging into the forest.

Possibilities and potential outcomes raced through his mind as he dodged between the trees. So far, he hadn’t really run up against much that could outright kill him. Some had given him pause.

Some he hoped never to discover the answer to the question of: who would win? His nymph allies being a great example.

But this blue woman was a mystery. He didn’t actually know a thing about her, and what little he had gleaned wasn’t too useful.

He was learning things, though. Like the fact that she was either incredibly fast, incredible skilled at moving without being heard, or both. Beyond that initial glimpse, he saw nothing, heard nothing, and could find only the barest hints of a trail leading into the forest.

At one point he hesitated, looking around, uncertain of where to go, and he saw the briefest flash of blue to his left and took off again.

It quickly became obvious that this was not going to go the way he wanted it to, though as he picked up the pace, Jak thought he might be closing the gap. How fast was this...person? Spirit? Something else entirely?

He briefly saw the tall blue figure dash between two trees ahead of him, adjusted his course, and ran as fast as he could. As he kept going, he became aware of another sound: the heavy breathing and then the deep growl of a blade-toothed tiger.

It was somewhere farther off to his left. Something to keep track of, but for the moment he needed to stay focused on–

Jak skidded to a halt as he heard a shout of pain come from the direction of the blade-toothed tiger. Gritting his teeth, he was briefly torn. Though his recognition of the voice was very faint, he felt compelled to help, but he was catching up with the mysterious figure, or had been until he’d stopped. But even as he looked…

Directly ahead of him, partially obscured behind a tree and among some foliage, he caught sight of a very tall blue woman, staring at him, her single visible eye bright gray.

She had lured him he here, he realized at once.

Why?

To see what he would do? The choice was at least obvious: continue his pursuit of her, or go help whoever it was that was in peril.

With a short, irritated growl, Jak turned and began sprinting towards the sound of conflict, drawing his adze. He knew the tall blue woman would be gone by the time he tried to track her down again, but this had been a shaky prospect at best anyway.

Jak burst into a clearing a moment later and found a blade-toothed tiger looming over a familiar figure, who was lying on the ground, bleeding. Reacting on instinct, he hurled the adze towards the powerful beast. It flipped through the air, closing the distance between them in an instant, and buried itself in the huge tiger’s side.

The beast roared and reacted immediately, turning towards the thing that had hurt it.

Jak prepared himself for an intense battle, but the person he shared the clearing with surprised him by surging to her feet and leaping at the immense creature and burying a blade in its throat. She screamed as she yanked the blade sideways, opening up a huge wound on the tiger’s neck. It roared once again and managed to throw her off, but immediately began to weaken.

He moved forward to finish the job, if it needed doing, but as he got there the blade-toothed tiger took another few stumbling steps and then collapsed into a heap of fur and limbs, blood continually pouring from its torn neck.

Jak regarded the wounded woman who was repositioning herself so that she sat against a tree. One hand was over her thigh, which the tiger had cut open with its immense claws.

He recognized her, the embyr who had nearly killed him once.

“You’re hurt. We have some healers in my tribe,” he said as he crouched by the tiger and yanked his adze free.

“I can heal myself,” the embyr woman replied.

He saw a curiously dark flash of magic as she smoothed her hand out over her wound and when she pulled it back, the deep cuts had been sealed up.

For a long moment, the two of them remained motionless, staring at each other. Finally, her eyes dipped to the adze in his hand. Jak shook the blood from it, then slipped it back into his waistwrap. Stepping forward, he offered her a hand.

The embyr looked at it for another long moment, then reached up and took it. Her skin was hot and rough in several places, and as he helped her to her feet, he immediately got the sense that she was exceptionally agile. Something in the way she moved, in the way she articulated her body in regaining her feet.

He let go of her and took a step back, to give her some space.

She seemed less tense than their first meeting, but still very on guard.

“So,” Jak said, finally breaking the silence, “you came.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “I came. Though I’m not sure if it is to join your supposed tribe of exiles...I was more looking for a place of peace.” She pursed her lips in distaste as she looked down at the dead animal. “So much for that.”

“Avat’s Forest is probably one of the safest places on the island,” Jak said.

“I know,” she replied, returning her attention to him. “In truth, this was the first real opposition I’ve run into. I managed to avoid the rest. I’ve seen some of your people. Luckily they didn’t see me.”

Jak studied the woman as she fell silent again. She didn’t seem to want to leave, but she also seemed uncertain about how to proceed.

“We never learned each other’s names,” he said.

“You first,” she replied.

“Very well. I am Jak.”

“I am Keeza.”

“All right, what brought you to Avat’s Forest?”

He felt like he was in an awkward position. He had invited her here, and he would accept her into the tribe, but at the same time, he worried about what might happen if she was moving around the forest on her own.

He trusted his tribemates, but some had very bad thoughts about the embyr.

Then again, he’d been concerned about the Tolvar and the karn, and yet his home village now had half a dozen karn living among them.

“I spoke truth before: I seek peace. I want to live without being in constant battle,” she replied.

“Is that what living among your tribe was like?”

She lost any semblance of a smile. “In a manner of speaking, yes. Not all battles involve fists and clubs. Your offer sounded genuine, and from what I have overheard as I’ve hidden from...those less skilled at tracking than you or your karn companion, it seems that this forest is a place of peace and rest, at least compared to the rest of the island.”

“I would say that’s mostly accurate,” Jak replied.

“Mostly?”

He nodded at the tiger. “Beyond the beasts we share the forest with, there are the corrupted that come in from the Barrens, and the occasional Tolvar warparty that attacks. But if you leave my people and my allies in peace, they should return the favor.”

“I see.”

“So...are you an exile of your people?”

Behind her, he saw her tail shift, then begin to sway. “I thought we discussed that last time.”

“You didn’t give me a direct answer,” Jak replied.

She let out a small laugh. “I suppose not. And a direct answer is what you seek?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm.” She put her hands on her hips and fixed him with a strong look, an expression of mild amusement on her face now. Jak waited. She let out a short sigh. “Very well, that is twice you have had my life in your hands and given it back to me. The truth is: I walked away from my people, such as they are. I tire of their cruelty and their eternal war for dominance of this little island. They were not sorry to see me go. So I suppose I am an exile.”

“What do you intend?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “For now, I desire to live alone and be alone. I want to know who I am when I am around no others.”

“Will you leave my people in peace while you determine that?” he asked.

“Yes, if they do the same.”

“They should. I’ll let them know to leave you be. If there’s nothing else, I have other things to do,” Jak said.

“Wait...your offer to join your tribe, it is a truthful offer?” she asked.

“It is a truthful offer,” he confirmed.

She stared at him with her glowing red eyes. “I will think about it.”

He nodded and headed out of the clearing. For a moment, he considered trying to pick back up the trail of the blue woman, but he had already spent enough time out here as it was.

Jak headed north, towards his home, towards the women he loved.

Monster Girl Inn III Preview

Finally, here it is!

This is the first chapter of Monster Girl Inn III, the final novel in the trilogy. You can read Chapter II over on Patreon right now, and you will be able to read all the following chapters as I post them, also on my Patreon for 3$/month.


Victor fought to quell the anxiety as it grew somewhere deep in his gut as he led Hazel through the trees of the Hinterland.

“I wanted to thank you again for coming, I know you’re busy,” he said, pushing back a particularly large and low-hanging branch, allowing her passage.

“I’m not that busy,” Hazel replied, “and this is important. In truth, I wish you had told me sooner.”

“We’ve been busy with the inn and the ring seems to be working. It’s just, she said she should be awake in a week, and it’s now the eighth day…”

“These things can be unpredictable. Can you run it by me again?” Hazel asked. “You were a little, uh, light, on the details of some of this. She’s...where did you meet her, exactly?”

“Ilona is her name. We found her in a cave. She’s the necromancer who was sending the undead all over the place.”

“All right. The fact that you’ve got her ill and comatose in your inn means the meeting wasn’t hostile, I imagine.”

He shook his head, ducking under another branch. “No, she wasn’t. She’s sick. Lethally.”

“I got that part, and that’s it’s exclusive to elves. But did I understand this right? She intentionally cursed herself?” Hazel replied.

“Yes. To be undead. To buy more time.”

She let out a small laugh of appreciation. “She’s inventive. And brave.”

“I think more desperate in this case, but yes, she does seem brave.”

“All right. I’m not completely sure I’ll be able to help, though.”

“I know. I might be wasting your time, this might not even be necessary–”

“It’s fine, Victor. It isn’t a waste of time. Even if I can do nothing for the poor woman, I have been wanting to see you and the others, and visit your inn again.”

“We’ve made a lot of progress on it,” Victor replied.

“That’s good to hear.”

A lot of progress felt like a bit of an understatement. Having Nyx and now Delphine around so consistently meant that they’d been able to get much more done, and having Ilona there to care for and fret over had filled them all with a kind of intense, nervous energy.

They’d all been doing everything that needed doing, and consequently, work that he thought might take over a month or even two had been mostly wrapped up in little over a week. Delphine especially was working very hard.

There were times where it seemed like she was full of energy that she was trying to burn off, always asking for a new task and then going at it with an intense, almost ferocious focus.

It had been a trying time for all of them, but especially for Nyx.

At this point, the others were starting to pick up on it. Delphine seemed to be in the know, as she just gave an understanding expression whenever it became obvious that the stress was starting to get to Nyx, but Fiona and Jezzy still seemed confused and worried.

In a way, it was very surprising and gave a deep and, if anything, worrying view into just how much emotions and trauma could affect someone.

After five hundred years, he would have thought she’d be a lot more stoic.

It felt like a double-edged sword.

It was good that she still felt things, and intensely. That the relentless passage of time didn’t wear away who she was.

But it worried him that even fifty years from now he’d probably still have nightmares and have the occasional cry over what happened with his family.

When he’d asked her about it a few days ago, all she had to say was: It never goes away, but it does get easier.

“Oh wow, you have made a lot of progress here,” Hazel murmured as they at last broke through the dense vegetation of the Hinter.

Fiona had told him that they’d be able to clear a path to the main trail and maintain it with a bit of magic and some help from Fauna and a few friendly dryads.

They’d replaced the windows, the front door, fixed the roof and patched the holes in the walls. And thanks to a neat little spell that Nyx knew, the repairs looked seamless.

Speaking of Nyx…

“Oh my!” Hazel gasped as a shadow fell across them and Nyx landed heavily not far away.

“Sorry,” she replied, “but I’m glad you’re here.” She walked over. Her wings were flexing slowly open and closed behind her, and her tail was swaying. “How have you been? Your shop doing well?” She glanced back at the inn.

There was a slightly manic edge to her voice.

“Fine, and yeah,” Hazel replied. “...are you okay, Nyx?”

“I’m just nervous. I was out flying, trying to take my mind off things, but that didn’t help. I’m worried about Ilona...Victor told you, right?”

Hazel nodded. “He explained to me.”

“Okay, good. Will you look at her?”

“Yes.”

They all looked over as the front doors opened up and Jezzy came out.

“Is she awake?” Nyx asked before she could speak.

“No, no change, I’m sorry,” Fiona replied. “Hello, Hazel.”

“Hi, Fiona. Why don’t you show me to this dark elf, Ilona? I’ll see if there’s any insight I can offer,” Hazel suggested.

Fiona nodded. “This way.”

“Are you a healer?” Victor asked.

“I’m a witch,” Hazel replied as they all walked inside.

The main room was still fairly barren. Furniture was the last thing they needed.

“What does that mean, exactly?” Victor murmured, following them upstairs.

“That I have come across a great deal of knowledge in my lifetime, and that yes, I am a healer, when the situation calls for it. You mentioned a ring blessed by a God? I don’t think I’ll be able to outdo that, though.”

They came to the second story and as they approached the room Ilona was in, Fiona opened up the door and poked her head out.

“Hi, no change,” she said. “And hi Hazel.”

“Hi, Fiona,” Hazel replied.

They’d gotten used to saying that, ‘no change’, to Nyx, because she’d ask so often.

They tried not to crowd as Hazel came into the room. She took off her backpack and set it aside, then did the same with her traveling cloak. Victor studied Ilona as Hazel approached her bedside and sat down gently beside her.

She looked better, there was no doubt about that, and not just because they had removed her curse and all of its most obvious markings. Namely her veins being visible beneath her skin and a deathly pallor. She’d seemed generally less frail and fragile now.

But there was no denying the sickness and the curse had taken a heavy toll on her body.

Hazel touched her wrist for a moment. “Her heart beats regularly, if a bit slow,” she murmured, then put her own wrist to Ilona’s forehead. “Normal temperature.” She held her hand near her nose. “Breathing is a little shallow, but regular.”

Carefully, she leaned in and opened one of her eyes. Peering into it for a moment, she did the same with her other eye. “Her eyes seem fine. Has anything noteworthy happened since you cured her and put on the ring?”

“Not really,” Jezzy said.

“She shifted a little yesterday,” Nyx said. “And twice we heard murmuring, like she was having a bad dream. Once the day before yesterday and once the day after we put on the ring, if that has any significance.”

“Hmm.” Hazel laid her hand over the back of Ilona’s own hand, the one with the ring, and closed her eyes. An expression of concentration came onto her face. After a moment she stood back up, her eyes opening. “It’s doing its job, and it still feels intensely powerful.”

“So there’s nothing you can do?” Nyx asked.

“No. Normally I might try a little magic, but in truth I don’t want to interfere with the ring’s own magical properties. Although it looks like the curse has had no lingering effects on her body–whatever you did removed it completely–Black Cough is very serious. I’ve dealt with it before and I know that even if you manage to get your hands on the cure, it’s usually only a two in three chance that it’ll work.”

“Wait, so, it’s not a guarantee–” Nyx began, but Hazel shook her head.

“No, no, it’s okay. I mean...technically nothing’s a guarantee, but if there’s anything in this realm that can cure advanced Black Cough, it’s that ring. I can feel the raw magical energy. It’s just that this kind of sickness puts a heavy toll on the body. She just needs more time. I could be wrong, but I think she’ll wake up soon.”

“I can’t stand this godsdamned waiting,” Nyx growled. Her wings flexed suddenly and knocked over a chair. She sighed heavily. “Sorry.”

“It’ll be okay, Nyx. She’ll be okay,” Fiona murmured.

“I hope so.” Nyx heaved another sigh and walked out of the room abruptly. “I have to do something or I’m going to lose my patience.”

“Wait, don’t fly away,” Victor said, leaning out in the hallway after her. “I want to come with you. There’s something we need to do anyway.”

“Fine,” she said, heading back downstairs.

Victor turned back to face the others. “All right, I should keep this short with how impatient she is. Hazel: thank you for coming, it was good to see you, I’ll catch up with you later.”

“Same. And thanks for having me,” she replied.

He nodded. “Jezzy, Fiona: I love you, I’m going to go help Nyx keep busy.”

“We’ll be here,” Fiona said. “And I love you, too.”

Jezzy smiled. “You know I love you. Go be with her. See how Delphine’s divinations are going.”

He nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Uh…” He paused, considering the situation for a moment, just in case he was forgetting anything.

It had been a busy day.

A busy week.

“We’ll handle things here,” Jezzy said.

He nodded. “All right, thanks.”

Victor headed back downstairs. He still had his pack, his cloak, his gear from traveling down to Hearth Haven to ask Hazel for help. As he moved through the main room he looked around again and found his imagination roaming briefly.

It was easy to envision it full of tables and chairs, and people. People talking, people eating, people finding a place to get in out of the cold and enjoy some company. And, surprisingly, it was easy to envision himself being on the other side of that for once.

The person helping in the kitchen instead of looking into it occasionally while he waited for food or had a bit to drink.

That struck its own chord of anxiety, though.

He wasn’t so much worried about his role in the situation as he was worried about it not working. He’d become invested, emotionally speaking, but more to the point, he’d become invested in Fiona’s emotional investment in her dream.

When they’d talked earlier about the potential for failure, he’d believed what he’d told her: that there were any number of ways to manifest her dream of facilitating communication between village-dwellers and monsters, but…

It was obvious that this was a very big deal to her.

To all of them now.

Victor walked outside and found Nyx pacing back and forth. Well, they had some different priorities.

“What are we doing?” she asked as he came to stand before her.

“Let’s find Delphine,” he replied.

She nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

Without another word, she scooped him up in her arms and shot into the air, wings pumping as she gained dozens and then hundreds of feet.

And then they were sailing through the sky.

Monster Girl Inn II Preview

Monster Girl Inn II is underway and I’m hoping to have it out by the end of this month.

First chapter can be read below. First and second chapter are available to my 1$/month Patrons and above, right here.

Early access chapters to begin posting tomorrow.


“You know, I always heard that horses were supposed to be scared of demons,” Victor said as he finished tying the horse to the wagon.

“That’s just a story idiots like to pass around,” Jezzy said, smiling as she pet the horse that he had gone into town to rent.

She made a happy sound and shifted in place.

Jezzy giggled. “See? She likes me. She knows I’m nice.”

“We ‘monsters’, even succubi from another realm, tend to be more in tune with nature, which includes animals of all kinds,” Fiona said. She set her load into the back of the cart and proceeded to tie it down.

“Well, not all succubi,” Jezzy said. “One girl I knew was just terrified of birds. She was utterly convinced they were watching her. Planning something. I was so nervous when I first saw birds, because I’d only ever heard what she had to say about them. But they’re just...birds.”

“They don’t really have a plan beyond ‘eat’ and ‘sleep’,” Victor agreed as he finished up.

Fiona slithered up behind him. “And ‘mate’,” she murmured in his ear, wrapping her arms around him. She slowly slipped a hand down the front of his pants.

He exhaled sharply, feeling her large, bare breasts pressing against his back. “Yes...that too,” he managed.

“You’re getting bolder,” Jezzy grinned. She stepped away from the horse and up to him, and now he was surrounded by them. She settled her hands on his hips, grinning fiercely as she stared down at him with her glowing pink eyes.

“You both are...so tall,” Victor murmured.

“I love how much you like that about us,” Jezzy replied. “Can I tempt you to take a break? Do naughty things behind that tree over there?’

“You can but you shouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re sending me in there to try and talk Hazel into some fun and I’d rather save it for the potential foursome or threesome, depending on how much Fiona wants to watch,” he replied.

“I won’t know until we’re actually in the moment,” Fiona murmured. She sighed and took her hand out of his pants. “And that’s fair enough.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Jezzy said. She gave him a kiss, then stepped back. “I like this horse, but it’s too bad we had to spend so much coin on it…”

“We had to,” he replied, “we can’t very well have you hauling this into town. People would lose their minds. Now, I should really get to work selling this stuff off. The sooner I get to it, the sooner I’ll be back. Hopefully with Hazel.”

“Unless there’s some kind of emergency, I imagine she will come back with you once she knows I’m back around,” Jezzy replied.

“I hope so.” He kissed them both and then hopped up onto the cart.

Getting settled, he began guiding the horse and they started the slow roll into the township proper. He took the opportunity to just relax for a little bit. That was what yesterday was supposed to have been: relaxation.

Only it hadn’t.

Not that he was complaining, exactly.

After the long day of getting everything back from the abandoned mine, the four of them had decided to just take it easy for a bit. But when all four people involved in ‘taking it easy’ were horny, and one of them was a succubus, there tended to be a lot of sex happening. And what was supposed to be a day of rest had turned into a lot of exciting lovemaking.

Victor yawned and rubbed at his eyes as he tried to rouse himself.

Velena had finally parted ways with them last night. Fiona said she tended to get flighty after spending too much time in one place, and sure enough, she’d sort of just left after a quick and abrupt goodbye.

Fiona had told him not to take it personally, and in truth he could respect the feeling.

Victor reached into his pocket and checked that the parchment was still there. It was. They had actually done the responsible thing after she’d left and made a complete list of everything they needed to finish repairing the inn.

Tools, nails, lumber, doors, windows, furniture, and a bunch of other odds and ends.

He was pretty confident they wouldn’t get it all. In truth, they’d be lucky to get half of it, even with the haul from the mine, but it would be another big step forward and they weren’t exactly in a rush to get this done.

As the Hinterland drifted by to either side of him, he found his thoughts drifting. Today was the first day he’d had of alone time in what felt like a while. And now that he was by himself and relatively safe, he could think more on where his life had taken him.

It had brought him to strange places over the years.

Mostly good places, some really, really bad places. At times he felt like he was leading his own life, but at others he felt like he was as helpless to control the course of his existence as a shipwreck victim clinging desperately to a piece of driftwood in a storm.

Victor had gone a lot of places, seen a great deal, had many adventures, but he never really thought he’d end up in the Hinterlands, romantically involved with not one, but two monster girls, repairing an old inn.

Unlikely didn’t seem like a strong enough word to describe the situation.

This, however unlikely it seemed, felt different than every other adventure he’d found himself in over the years.

An adventurer’s life was, by default, a wanderer’s life.

But there was an extra layer of intensity to that fact when the adventurer had no home to return to. Victor had actually encountered many adventurers who intended to return to their home village and settle back down some day. And even some who did return and stay for a season out of the year. There were some who intended to adventure until they died, but they were rare.

It always seemed to him that the adventurers who had no home to return to were of that last variety, but he supposed it was possible that he had simply met those adventurers and spoken with them at a point before they did eventually settle down.

Was that what he intended to do here?

Could he live out his days in an inn situated in the Hinter?

The fact that he didn’t immediately think no was giving him a bit of anxiety, and he couldn’t even figure out why.

Was it because he had grown so used to the idea that, eventually, he would move on?

It could be that simple, but he somehow doubted that it was.

As Hearth Haven came into view, Victor pushed the thoughts from his head. For the moment, he had a very long stretch of bargaining, negotiating and, perhaps, intimidating in front of him, depending on how much the merchants thought they could take advantage of him. He wasn’t really prone to that last one, but…

He wasn’t above it.

He needed a clear head for this next part, Fiona and Jezzy were relying on him.

Victor reined in his temper. “No,” he repeated, “I don’t want that one. Just these.”

“Are you sure?” the shopkeeper asked again.

“I’m completely, absolutely sure. And I promise, if I ever want that window, I will march promptly back to this store and purchase it.”

“Well, if you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

“All right. Well, it’s two hundred fifty coins even for the rest,” the shopkeeper said.

Victor nodded and dropped two of his one hundred coin pouches, his final two, in fact, and a fifty coin pouch on the counter between them. The merchant picked each up and weighed them in his hand, then peered inside, then made it all disappear behind the counter.

“Thanks for the business,” he said.

“Yep,” Victor replied, and picked up the first of the five windows he’d purchased. He had wanted more, but this was the last of his coin for now.

He began shifting them out to the cart.

The journey through town had lasted longer than he’d feared. It had been a complicated route along the cobblestone roads, making a stop at each of the varied places he needed to visit, to both sell and buy. Given he wasn’t as familiar with the town yet, it was a bit stop and start as he just went to the stores as he saw them.

And just about all of the merchants had been difficult in one way or another.

Given how much experience they all no doubt had with adventurers coming through, each had honed their skills to a fine art, able to extract much and give little in return. Victor had his own methods for dealing with their tactics, but at this point he was just getting sick of it. He wasn’t even thirty yet, but inside these stores he began to feel like a grumpy old man.

Victor noted that now that the shopkeeper had his coin, the man made no move to help load the leather-wrapped windows into the cart. Not that he particularly wanted help at this point, if he had one more poor interaction he was liable to do something regrettable, but it was just one more irritating thing on a long list of them.

Finally, he got the last window in and secured.

Before anything else could annoy him, Victor got up into the seat and set the horse towards Hazel’s place. He glanced skywards. The sun was a few hours past its highest point. He relaxed a little. Despite how long it had taken, there was still more than enough time to talk with Hazel, get out of the town, return the horse, and then get to the inn and relax.

And maybe do other things.

A few moments later, he brought the cart to a halt and put the horse in the shade. Walking in through the front door into the darkened shop, he felt a strange sensation. Not of anything magical, but of the passage of time.

With all that had happened, it felt like he’d been here last season, not last week.

“Well, look who’s back.”

Hazel was again standing behind the counter, this time working on a potion. She had a little cluster of small glass containers, each filled with a different kind of liquid, centered around one glass vial held upright.

“I missed you,” he replied, walking slowly closer, not wanting to mess up her work.

But she seemed a pro at it, able to continue on with the work and conversation and other distractions at the same time.

“Did you now?” she murmured, pouring some glowing blue liquid into the vial.

“Very much so.”

She laughed softly. “Took you long enough.”

“I was, uh, busy out there.”

“Oh were you now?” She picked up another glass bottle with a murky green liquid and swirled it around, then paused and sniffed. She looked up at him with her glowing eyes and a broader grin spread slowly across her beautiful face. “You found a girl with horns out there.”

“And a tail,” he replied. “Two girls with tails, actually.”

“Oh my.” She focused on the potion again. “One moment.” She carefully poured five drops of the green liquid into it, then began corking everything. “Care to share the details?”

“Well, there was a lot of fucking,” Victor replied.

“I figured as much.” She leaned down, putting the containers under the counter.

She was wearing an especially revealing shirt, and her pale breasts seemed to threaten to tumble out each time she leaned down.

“I found Jezzy,” he said.

She laughed. “Knew it! Knew that girl would find you. I was hoping she was back...hmm. Who is the other girl with a tail? Another succubus?”

“No, a viper named Fiona.”

“Oh my. Most men would admit to making love with a succubus, but I knew few men who would seek out a viper...fewer still who would openly admit to being intimate with one.” She picked up the vial and swirled it around gently a few times, then corked it and placed it under the counter. Hazel fixed him with a confident smile and an intense stare. “But I knew there was something special about you as soon as you walked in here...I’ve never met Fiona, but I do know of her. Jezzy has told me. She sounds sweet.”

“She really is,” he replied.

“Oh.” Hazel gave him a more appraising stare.

“What?”

“I’ve heard that tone before. You...are something truly special, aren’t you?”

He laughed awkwardly. “I...don’t know. Am I?”

“You traveled here from who knows how far away to fuck monster girls. Rare, but not unheard of,” she replied.

“How did you know, by the way?”

“I guessed. Just a strong feeling. But,” she continued, “I have come across almost no one who is willing to have a romantic relationship with monster girls. It’s difficult enough for most to contemplate building a life and sharing a home with a different race, but a village-dweller and a forest-dweller? Almost never.”

“Really? That rare?” he asked.

“Yes. I spent a lot of time traveling the land. Occasionally I still do. As a witch, I’m more accepted among the forest-dwellers. And yes, they tend to stay on their sides of the line.” She regained that smile. “Have you been with anyone else?”

“A harpy.”

“Oh my.”

“And a gekon adventuress.”

“You get around.”

“Apparently,” he replied.

“So, is that why you’re here?” she asked, putting her hands on her pleasantly sized hips.

“Yeah. I was hoping to get around to you. Jezzy said you can’t stay away from her and you’d do anything to be with her again, so I should use that as a lure to get you to come spend time with us out in the Hinter,” he said.

“Oh that pink bitch,” Hazel muttered, rolling her eyes. “She thinks she’s so great.”

“...she is,” Victor said. “Having been with her now, I feel like I can safely confirm that.”

Hazel laughed. “Yeah, but she’s still annoying!”

“Because she’s right?”

“Not as right as she thinks...but yes, I do want to get back with her. And I must say that the idea of taking you and her to bed at the same time is exceptionally appealing to me.” She looked around her shop. “Okay, go on and wait for me. I’ll wrap everything up here and then I will join you for some fun in the woods.”

“Very glad to hear that,” he said, heading for the exit.

This was going to be a really good night.

Raw IV Preview

The writing of RAW IV has begun and here is the first chapter.

If you are a Patron at any level over on my Patreon, you can also read the second chapter here.

If you are a 3 or 5$/month patron, you will be able to read future chapters as they are posted on my Patreon.

I’m aiming for a mid-to-late August release for Raw IV.


Jak found evidence of his target along the outskirts of the woodlands.

He crouched in the shadow of a large boulder, staring at the trees and dense vegetation ahead of him, considering his options.

This was Ara Forest, a place he knew he was not welcome.

His tribe now numbered over one hundred people, almost twenty of them elven, and every elf had told him the same thing: non-elves were not welcome in their home forest. Stories of incursion by the exiles who had come to call the Dektyr Tribe home ended the same: elves eventually arrived and forced them to leave.

What changed was the severity of the response. The most recent of his new tribemates, a human woman and her half-elf son who had been exiled after years of an awkward stalemate of protection due to her status as a skilled healer, had said they were very nearly killed by the elves who found them when they had been hiding in the forest.

Given he was fully intending to try making peace with them, he was reluctant to risk a violent encounter.

On the other hand, he really wanted to find the exile he’d been seeking for the past two days.

Finally, with one more survey of the immediate area, Jak left the relative safety of the boulder and began making for the treeline.

Something about the forest set him on edge, and as he drew closer, it occurred to him that it was the differences. Ara Forest looked different than Avat’s. The trees were of a contrasting breed, their coloring strange and almost, but not quite, familiar. Their tops were sharper, more pronounced, their profiles narrower.

The forest floor, he saw as he slipped within the woodlands, was denser. There were more places to hide for predator and prey alike. As he began hunting around for the trail again, Jak let his senses open up, taking in the strange new forest around him.

Sights, sounds, scents.

Secrets.

All of it feeding him crucial information and helping shape the world around him.

Paying attention, listening for that tiny twig snapping, that branch being shifted, the soft huffing of an animal, smelling the scent as the wind shifted, catching the barest hint of movement among the vegetation, anything could provide a wary hunter with that one crucial second of warning needed that meant the difference between brutal death and survival.

There.

He saw the imprint of a bare foot, a bit narrow, an elf.

The one he was tracking. The trail made for the northeast, heading away from the core of the forest, thankfully. As Jak began following, eyes continually roving over the landscape around him, he found his thoughts drifting uncertainly, like a branch tossed into the sea.

Things were different now.

Not all of them. In some ways his life had taken on a reassuring regularity.

After killing the Tolvar war chief and helping Ripper and his small tribe of karn exiles retake their village, he had been ready to go on the hunt for allies in the war against the Tolvar that had been transforming from embers and sparks to true flames.

Except other things had demanded his attention.

Just a few days after that, a sickness had hit his tribe and spread through it like a wildfire during a drought. It was nothing truly serious, just a cough and a fever and lethargy. Just about everyone had fallen ill over the course of the following days, and it was very random who was affected and how. Rylee just had a cough and mild fever for a day, while Niri had been unable to leave their cave for very long for several days in a row.

He had begun to seriously worry, but Rylee reassured him again and again that she would be fine. Sometimes people got sick. But with pregnancy, he’d tasted fear in a way he never had before. To make matters worse, as one of only three people who had never gotten sick, (Nessa and Kes were the other two), he’d been run ragged just trying to keep up with the normal day-to-day affairs of the tribe. Gathering water and food, provided security, and hunting down plants to help relieve the suffering of his people.

As the sickness had faded and regular life resumed, Jak still found himself running around Avat’s Forest, dealing with problems.

A few particularly dangerous beasts had been found that needed to be put down.

Sometimes someone went missing and had to be tracked down.

Rylee would need a rare plant.

One of the builders or toolmakers would need a rare rock or gemstone or wood.

He’d also taken on the project of setting up a second defensive outpost, this one to the northwest, in the spot that Ripper and his people had originally holed up in.

This string of projects and tasks had revealed in him something Jak was still grappling with. Within him were two core desires.

One was a man who wanted to lead and conquer, to keep pushing, to take the fight to the enemies and bathe in their blood.

The other was a man who wanted to sit by the fire with his tribemates, to hunt game to provide for his people, to lay in his cave with his bond-mates and talk quietly for hours, to stare at the shadows dancing on his cave ceiling as he laid awake at night, listening to Niri and Rylee and Nessa as they slept around him.

That second man was who he had settled into after the sickness had forced him to stick close to his village or risk losing it, and after spending several nights staring long into the fire, considering this, Jak had decided this was the man he wanted to be.

If he was given a choice, he would chose this life.

But he knew that he was not being given a choice, and although the victory at the old karn village and the lack of a serious response from the Tolvar for a few weeks had given him the illusion of peace, even a temporary one, it had been shattered several days ago by another large attack. They had handled it, but it had rekindled the blazing fire of war that had been ignited in him during that final attack. He needed to act.

Stepping out of his cave the morning following the attack, Jak had felt the change in a number of ways, but mostly he felt it as he looked up at the trees surrounding his village and, for the first time, truly realizing that they were dying.

The long decay had begun.

The transition between summer and winter, life and death, had commenced.

It was still a ways off, but now it was on everyone’s minds.

And the chill wind that blew through the village that morning seemed to herald the call of responsibility, of the coming war.

Like a shadow cast over them all.

And so he had stepped up his efforts to find more tribemates, no longer waiting for them to come to him, or for his people to stumble across them while out hunting or foraging. Instead, he organized small search parties and sent them out to track down potential recruits of all kinds. And this was how he had nearly doubled the size of his tribe over the past month.

Jak paused as he heard something, his hand going for his adze.

Something shifted in the bushes to his left. He waited, still as a stone, watching, wary.

After a long moment passed, the gray blur of a rabbit suddenly shot out and away, fleeing into the undergrowth.

He resumed his journey, hunting for the elf known as Lekken.

Most of the recruits that they’d gained came from stories the newer tribemates had to tell. People they had seen while on their way there, evidence of camps in valleys or groves or small copses, tales of exiles trying to go it alone.

Three times now he had heard of an elven exile who saved others in dangerous situations, then disappeared.

Curiosity and practicality had pushed him to grab his survival pack, kiss his bond-mates farewell, and strike out to the north.

Someone like this would be a boon to his tribe.

Thoughts of peace and alliances weren’t far from his mind, either. As he stalked through the trees, still getting used to the new scents and general vibe of Ara Forest, he lamented over the difficulties so far.

Although the peace made with the nymphs and Ripper was invaluable, he knew that more was needed. Much more.

And so far no one had been able to make any real progress with regards to a broader alliance.

The elves were mysterious and elusive, shut up in their forest, refusing entry to all not like themselves.

The karn were divided, not just between those who were under the control of the embyr and those who weren’t, but even farther between those who believed in the ways of Redtooth and those who did not.

The valt clan lived on the entire other side of the island and may not even be there anymore.

Tracking down the mysterious Lekken seemed to be a decent first step in finding his way into the Jari Clan of the elves. He still wasn’t entirely convinced that he shouldn’t just walk into their village and ask to speak with their leader about the obvious danger threatening to consume the whole of the island, but every elven exile he’d spoken to said this would be a very bad idea.

Jak stopped again. The trail he had been following had ceased abruptly.

He drew his adze and slowly looked around, paying careful attention to every detail of his surroundings.

For a reason he did not quite know, he felt positive he was following Lekken. Just a feeling, something in his gut saying it was so.

If this elf was as evasive as the stories made him out to be, then he was no doubt aware that he was being followed.

Jak was good at tracking and moving stealthily through the forest, and he thought himself an expert at it, but based on some of the things he had seen his elven tribemates do, he knew the general level of tracking and stealth was higher among elves.

So someone known for it might be even better than him.

Finally, he saw evidence that his quarry had climbed a nearby tree. He looked up. The leaves and branches were dense, hiding much.

Jak decided to try for the honest approach and put his adze away.

He could sense someone nearby, even if he couldn’t see them.

“I know you’re here,” he said, “and I just want to talk.”

The silence that persisted went on for long enough that Jak began to wonder if maybe he was sensing something else.

And then a slim figure dropped from a tree to his left and landed lightly on the ground.

It took a lot of willpower not to draw his weapon again and shift into a defensive stance. Instead, Jak turned to face this man.

He was indeed an elf. He was a little taller than the average elf, slim, built of lean, compact muscle. His blonde hair was cut very short, and the smear of ash around his eyes gave him away. Jak had distant memories of his old tribe applying warpaint sometimes. All the stories of Lekken had described him with a dark slash across his eyes.

“You are the Amber Warrior I’ve heard so much about,” he said.

“And you are Lekken,” Jak replied.

The elf looked mildly surprised. “I have saved enough of my people that it does not surprise me that my description has reached your ears, but my name?”

“Jayna told me about you.”

Lekken stiffened slightly. Jak noticed he was holding a strangely shaped stick of some kind, and something was slung over his shoulder. It was familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it. He knew, however, that it was a weapon of some sort.

“And how is Jayna?” he asked.

“She lives. She’s happy. We found her some suns ago at the edge of Avat’s Forest, leading a small group of exiles. She joined my tribe,” Jak replied.

Lekken seemed to be studying him closely, no doubt trying to read him for lies.

“I see. Why was she exiled?” he asked.

“She didn’t say beyond the fact that she ‘displeased the Xentan’.”

Lekken bared his teeth. “That seems to be happening more often now…” He refocused on Jak. “Why are you following me?”

“I want you to join my tribe,” Jak replied.

“Why should I?”

“We seek peace for the island, and we could use your help. Everyone who has spoken of you has talked of your great skill as a warrior and a hunter. We have several of your people at our village.”

He tensed again. “And how do you treat my people?”

“I treat them as my own: well. They are not treated any differently because they are elves.”

“Hmm. And how do you propose peace for this island?”

“Kill the Tolvar, and probably the embyr tribe in the west, and make peaceful alliances with all others.”

Lekken laughed bitterly. “If you think you can make peace with the karn who inhabit this island, you are sadly mistaken.”

“I already have made peace with a group of karn. And I am mated to a karn. And, just in case you have heard the rumors: no, I cannot control karn. They work with me of their own will.”

Lekken stared at him for a long moment. He seemed not to be able to decide what to say in response to that. “If you truly wish for me to join your tribe, then I have a requirement. Something I need to do right now. And if you want me to consider your request, you’ll help me.”

“What is it?” Jak replied. He was used to this by now. Everyone always wanted something from him, and it was usually help finding or killing something.

“The Tolvar have been taking my people captive. I don’t know why. But it does not matter. Some were taken this morning. One managed to get away and found me, told me about it. I’ve been tracking them ever since. I think I’ve almost found them. Help me free them and kill the Tolvar who took them captive and I will journey with you to your village, and seriously consider your request.”

“I accept these terms,” Jak said.

“Good, follow me.”

The two men headed off into the forest.

Raw III Preview

Here is the first chapter of Raw III!

Chapter II is available on my Patreon.

And subsequent chapters will also be posted as early access to my Patreon.


The persistence of the ocean had become just another sound in the collection of noises that Jak had come to live with since awakening on the shores of this island on that cold, dismal night. The sounds of life rose and fell in cadence with the cycle of day and night. The calls of the birds, the whistling of the winds, the rustling of the canopy, occasionally the patter of rain, and, though it was the most unerring of all, the distant crash of the ocean as it beat upon the shoreline had been reduced both by distance and familiarity.

As Jak now approached that exact same coast where his old life had terminated and his new life had begun, he found himself mesmerized by the waves. At first by the sound of them and then, with even more power as he came out of the trench that had once been his home and came to stand at the place where the dirt met the rocky shore, by the sight of it.

The vast ocean.

He stood staring, listening, feeling at once both a strange serenity and a distant fear.

Though he knew it not to be true, the expanse of water seemed to have no end. It felt impossible. It felt unthinkably massive. It felt…

Old.

Ancient.

Older than the trees. Older than the rocks. Older even than the dirt he walked upon every single day. Older than the cave he called home.

Perhaps even older than the sky.

Jak wasn’t sure how long he stood there, enraptured by the ceaseless repetition of the waves as they rolled eternally towards the island, but at some point, the loud, familiar caw of a certain giant crow broke his meditative state.

He looked around, first at the shore itself, locating the exact spot where he had awoken. Time was a difficult subject, at times, often in examination of memories, it seemed strangely disordered and also impossibly lengthened or shortened. It felt unthinkable to him that he had awoken on this shore less than the passing of a season ago, when it felt like a whole winter should have come and gone since then.

Was this a result of his memory loss, or simply a part of life?

In the month that had passed since the founding of his tribe, Jak had learned that there were some common experiences or thought patterns that he had to adjust to both due to his lost memories and also to what little he could remember of his life before. It was clear that the life he had lived was very different from just about everyone else he had met.

With a soft sigh, Jak turned away from the spot on the shore that would seem no different to anyone else, and looked south.

It grew a bit more barren down that way. He saw a mostly dead tree standing skeletal against the blue sky. This was where the crow perched, staring at him. Although it was an animal, Jak felt he could read something in its stance, its piercing black eyes.

Something ominous.

Almost a threat.

Do not come this way.

“Why?” he murmured.

When Jak had set out on this task of coming to see the place where his new life had begun, in the cold, in pain, in isolation, he hadn’t had much thought of why beyond he wanted to do it and he had the time to.

But now that he was here, some part of him, small yet powerful, wanted to walk farther south. To follow the shore to its end and see what was there.

Because he was certain something was there.

Jak began walking. The crow cawed at him, sharply, the sound carrying well over the hiss of the waves.

It sounded like a threat...or perhaps a warning.

Like a wolf growling deep in its throat if you drew too close to the meat it was eating.

Jak slowed, and then when the crow flapped its immense wings a few times and cawed again, he finally stopped. It was still a good distance off, and the place he wanted to go was farther than that, out of sight, hidden by a collection of trees. He looked from the trees to the large bird that was, at this point, almost a resident of his tribe by proxy. The huge black bird was seen almost daily by someone around the tribe, and Jak still had the curious impression that it was, in some way, not just watching out for his tribe, but smart enough to.

And now it was warning him away.

So far, it had yet to lead him astray. That didn’t mean he fully trusted it, but he trusted his instincts, and to this day, they told him that the crow was trying to help. He still wasn’t entirely convinced it wasn’t a Spirit of the Forest, or perhaps some strong magic-user’s pet, or thrall. That didn’t necessarily mean it was secretly evil or part of some plan against him, but it also didn’t mean it was fully trying to help him.

Something was happening on this island, something somehow relating to him. He was convinced of it at this point. His first memory was of a strange, blue figure standing over him on the shore. And since then, that figure had met him in his dreams and nightmares more than once. He had the impression that it was trying to help him, but it had more of an air of mystery than he was comfortable with.

Of course, it was possible that all of this was a manifestation of a damaged mind. Perhaps he was imagining some of it, and simply assigning meaning to random events for the rest. Jak finally turned around and started walking back.

As he did, he smiled.

Though he had grown increasingly distracted by the sounds of the ocean, Jak had not missed the fact that he was being followed by someone who thought they were more quiet than they truly were. He paused as he neared the trench cut into the landscape.

“I know you’re there, Niri. Come out,” he said.

There was a lingering pause, and then the slim elf stepped out from behind a tree. “How did you know?” she demanded.

“You’ve developed your abilities much since we first met, but you have to remember that my hearing and senses are better than almost everyone else on this island,” he replied.

She sighed heavily and then lost any sense of irritation, instead becoming awkward. “Are you mad, that I followed you?”

“No,” he replied. “I am curious, though.” He walked over to her.

“I wanted to see where you were going,” she said. “And also…”

“Also?”

“I wanted to visit the cave. Our cave. And the log.”

“We can do that,” he said.

She smiled. “Good! Let’s go!”

Jak laughed and they set off down the trench, sticking to the left side of it, which began to rise upwards the farther along they went. They walked alongside the earthen wall, and already Jak was remembering their first meeting. How he had saved Niri, and how he had gradually begun to understand the scope of the situation on the island.

“You seem different,” Niri said after several moments of silence.

“Different today? Or in general?” Jak replied.

“In general.”

“How?”

“I guess I noticed it when I was following you. It’s the way you move, the way you walk. You used to be more...wary, I guess. You’d look around more. But now it’s like you aren’t worried about anything. You’re calmer, but at the same time, still really aware? It is hard to describe. Looking at you from a distance, I had the impression that if I wanted to sneak up on you and attack you, it would be a bad idea. Maybe it’s just because I know you so well, but I think I would think that even if you were a stranger. And apparently I was right. You knew. Was it the whole time?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“How?”

“It’s hard to describe. I think part of it has to do with the fact that I know you so well. I can just tell when you’re following me.”

“Hmm.”

“Does that annoy you?”

She sighed. “Maybe a little. Maybe I want to sneak up on you at some point and surprise you. You’ve done it to me more than once.”

He laughed. “I don’t really mean to.”

“If you say so...I think you do it on purpose at least a little, sometimes.”

“Maybe,” he admitted. “You’re kind of fun to startle.”

“Fine, but that means I get to do things like this!” She broke away from his side and leaped onto his back. Jak caught her easily, supporting her and getting her settled almost instinctively at this point. She’d taken to doing it a lot, and so had Rylee after Niri had set the standard. He was strong enough that it didn’t bother him, and having them in all their soft, feminine glory pressing against his back as he carried them around (usually to the bedding), made the experiences pleasant ones. He carried her along the way and then up the path that led to the cave he, her, and Rylee had originally called home. As they neared the top, he let her down.

His senses were finely tuned, but there existed things, and people, who slipped past them, and it usually was a good idea to remain cautious.

Jak listened for a few seconds, then peered into the cave. He relaxed when he saw there was nothing and no one inside.

“It’s safe,” he said, walking within. Niri joined him.

The two walked deeper in, eventually coming to a halt near the center of the small cave, and for a moment, simply stood there, looking around.

The remains of their bedding was still there to be seen, the remnants of their fire, a few broken pots and tools, and, most prominent of all: Niri’s cave drawing. It seemed much simpler compared to works that she had done since then, mainly because it was done entirely in charcoal, and they had since found flowers to turn into a paste that could provide all sorts of color. Even still, it looked masterful to him, a simple yet elegant depiction of a pair of deer near some trees and a little watering hole, all of it beneath a sun and some clouds.

“You came back, didn’t you?” he murmured.

“I did,” she replied, then smile broadly. “I’m so happy you can tell.”

“You’re very skilled at this. It’s hard to be anything but amazed.”

“There are many things I love about you,” Niri said, looking at him now, “but that you appreciate my drawing, my painting...that one is a thing I really love about you.” She paused, frowned a little. “Maybe that is selfish. One of the things I like about you most is how you like an aspect of me.

“It’s not selfish, Niri,” he replied. “You aren’t a selfish person. You don’t have to worry about that.” He glanced past her, out the entrance to the cave, judging the quality of the light. The sun had not yet reached its apex, but it was getting there, and today was the day he wanted to have a meeting about the future of the tribe. Or at least the next step. “We should be going.”

“Okay,” she said. She took his hand and let him lead her out of the cave.

It was interesting, he thought, how much she trusted him. He’d done his best to imprint upon her the need to rely on her own senses and instincts more than any one person, and she had clearly taken them to heart, but he could tell she still trusted him implicitly to keep her safe. He would, there was no question of that, but he knew it was a situation to be observed. He was not perfect, not unstoppable. And the thought of losing her or Rylee, or Nessa now…

Was unbearable.

Nessa. He hadn’t seen her in a week, and although she had yet to dedicate herself to either him or their tribe, Jak could sense a strong, intense bond between the two of them. One that she was working towards consummating.

He wasn’t entirely sure what she was doing out there, sometimes beyond Avat’s Forest, beyond the fact that it had something to do with her people and helping them, trying to unify them somehow, and that it was dangerous. She tended to show up every few days, often injured but in high spirits. Mostly. When they were alone, she was happy to be there with him, but she admitted she was failing in her chosen task, and it was getting to her.

That he hadn’t seen her for almost a week bothered him, and soon he would need to go looking for her if she didn’t return.

They slowed as they reached the clearing that held the hollowed-out log they’d once, briefly, called home.

The two of them walked up to the entrance. To the untrained eye, there was nothing to show it had ever housed anyone, but Jak could see a tiny bit leftover. A few impressions in the dirt and plants left behind, largely protected from the elements.

“This was the first place we ever shared intimacies,” he said. “Do you think this was where you became pregnant?”

Niri smiled and looked down, laying both hands across her bare stomach, which was still smooth and taut. “Perhaps,” she murmured. “Maybe it was in the cave. Or the waterfall.” She looked back up at him. “We’ve shared intimacies in so many places.”

“Yes, we have.” He turned his attention away from the log and focused on her. He put one hand over both of hers. She moved them out of the way and laid his hand flat against her stomach, then held it with her own. “You are sure?” he asked.

“I am sure,” she replied, smiling. “We both are. We each have missed our time of bleeding.”

“I’ve never actually asked, but...why does that happen?”

She lost her smile, looking irritated. “We elves are told that it is a form of giving to the Forest. If we are not pregnant, then the Forest demands a small portion of us, and that is how it takes it. But now that I have spoken with Rylee and several other former Tolvar women, I find myself more inclined to believe them.”

“What do they say?”

“That it is a punishment, for not engaging in the planting of seeds enough, for not bearing fruit. Given that it always hurts my stomach, and how easy it is to become angry or irritable while it happens...yes, I am inclined to believe Rylee, though it would make no sense for an elf also to experience it if it is a Tolvar punishment. I truly don’t know why it happens, only that if it stops happening, it means that we have become pregnant. That is the only thing that can stop it. Even then, it will start up again at some point after giving birth.”

“I’m sorry, it sounds miserable.”

“It really is. But,” she said, looking down at herself once more and regaining her smile, “it doesn’t matter. Because I am pregnant, because you planted your seed in me, and it took root. And I have never been happier. I know Rylee is so happy, too. We talk about it a lot.” She brought his hand up to one of her cheeks and nuzzled it. “I can’t think of anyone I would rather have planted his seed in me,” she murmured.

“I’m very happy about this as well, Niri,” Jak replied.

“I know. I’ve gotten so that I can read you...most of the time. You hide your feelings well, but I can at least tell you are happy about this. Now, we should get back to the village, because I can tell when you are getting impatient to get back to work.”

He laughed and kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be. I like being out here with you, it’s just…”

“It’s just that you run an entire village, your own tribe, and that is much work. It’s okay. I understand.”

“I appreciate it.”

They shared a kiss, and then began walking back through the forest.