The mountains were a domineering strip that stretched steadily across the horizon; we had been marching towards them for a couple of days, and now I was aware of the sensation of being minimized to near nothing. As they expanded before us, myself and the men around me had begun to grow quiet, an eerie silence falling upon us, and now we only spoke in whispers, as if something spoken too strong wou...
“This little stone,” Salus said, holding the stone up to the sunlight and sending purple rays racing across the grass, “is what stands between us and freedom.”
I cocked my head, unable to draw the connection. The gemstone was an ayri, and although it was certainly expensive, that was just about the only thing it had in common with the King. They weren’t even extraordinarily rare – Aulus ...
When you’re stupid and seven years old, sitting in some molding, mildew, shack of a classroom, and you’re asked what you want to be, you don’t tend to be correct. For example, when my teacher asked me while looking at me with her best attempt at an inspirational gaze, I responded, “A ship captain!” Anyways, I am currently an assassin, and worse, I’m not even an assassin on a ship. Honestly, it’s ...
Space is not your friend. That’s the first thing they tell you before you put that spacesuit on and throw you out, telling you to, “Make your country proud.” But now, as I view the Earth from two hundred thousand miles away, I’m not so sure.
The day before Aberstein’s death, he had looked at me with an uncharacteristic seriousness in his gaze.
“This is how people die,” he said. “Three minutes past midnight.”
It hadn’t made sense to me at the time, but now his body was floating around somewhere in the Olstraavian Sea, probably getting nipped at by slaughter-fish and elk-rays, and now I had to answer for his death.
He released a grateful sigh when he saw the burning flash of the comet; he finished washing his hands before he gave it any thought. After all, there was no need to rush. The comet had smashed into earth just on time.
His clothing was already arranged on his messy bed – an industrial pair of boots to sift through the torrential bits of destruction outside, a white wrinkled button up that fit him...
He had passed three years ago in the dead of winter and the height of war. It had been mournful for all of two months, the way it is when you die at seventeen.
Now, I stood impatiently at his overgrown grave. No one really tended to it, anymore. He was a martyr and a hero, but that faded quickly when war knocked on your door. Around me, snow languidly fell to the frozen ground. I reached out a tr...
Dead leaves floated from above, landing around us.
We sat on a wooden bench, a bit away from the dying, gnarled tree at the town’s center and by a rotting train station. No one was outside around here, it seemed. Voices echoed throughout the lonely streets, and sometimes shadows peaked out in the corner of our eyes, but no one ever appeared.
“Maybe there was a festival,” I mumbled to my brothe...
