Jennifer Jones
Stories
4
Chapters
1,292
Words
687.3 K
Comments
0
Reading
2 d, 9 h
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Tala followed Pallaun and Thron through the broken hallways and rooms of the House of Blood’s hold. Just before they went out into the city, Pallaun pointed towards her, and she Thron jumped slightly, his eyes sliding off of her when he tried to look her way. “Invisibility?” Pallaun quirked a smile. “Nothing so… crude. You can consider it a perception filter. No one will see her.” The dwarf looked skeptical. “Is it a perception filter, though?” “No.” The Eskau turned and walked…-
211 •
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Tala was able to mostly pull herself back together by the time that they reached the main audience hall, where Sanguis sat in his chair, listening to reports and directing the after-battle clean up. From the snatches Tala had heard and processed on the relatively short walk, the two attacking Houses had been driven back with massive casualties. The House of Blood had lost some soldiers, but far fewer than the Houses of the Rising Sun and Acidic Tide. When the group loosely surrounding Tala entered the…
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211 •
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Tek glared at his candles, steadily pulsing orange, blue, green, yellow, and back again. That meant only one thing within his home. Someone was at the entrance. Leaving his book on the side table, Tek pulled open his inner door. With one step, he crossed the planar lines, reentering the material world and coming into his shadowed foyer. A single step more, this time through shadows, took him to the alcove sixty feet above and just inside his front door. The darkness here was complete. It almost made…
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211 •
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Tala looked at Be-thric, kneeling in his final moments, acidic power flowing off of him in waves. She had made her choice: she would seize her freedom or die trying. It was time to finish this. He looked towards her, heaving great gasps of air. The smallest smile, filled with pride and self-satisfaction, pulled at his lips despite his pain. “Well done.” He coughed, grimacing in an obvious attempt to focus. “I don’t have the strength to call for aid. Go for help. There’s still plenty of…
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211 •
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Tala jogged through the rather beaten down complex. The battle had not been kind to the architecture. She was able to snag some things of value, but not many. She and Pallaun had parted ways nearly a quarter hour ago, and she felt like she could sense Be-thric’s power nearby. She occasionally caught sight of the bull-man following her at a hesitant distance. The bull-man So, she had a problem to deal with. It was a smaller problem than when there had been three pursuers, but it was still a…
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211 •
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Tala’s mage-sight strained to pick out details as a dozen blazing lines of power lanced out in defense of the House of Blood’s hold. Each was countered before it was halfway to the attackers. Tala assessed the defensive reactions. A wave of arrows were launched from several large apparatuses, specific defenses designed to threaten those with counters to magical attacks. A kinetic disruption swept through the clouds of arrows, dropping them to the ground harmlessly. She wanted to blast straight…
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211 •
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Tala leaned back, wiping her mouth with a napkin as she looked at those around her in the lunch meeting. She didn’t really mind, but it was an interesting contrast, now that things were reversed. While waiting for the others to finish, she pulled out a simple ledger, and Alat projected one of the texts on the Doman-Imithe overtop of it. It had been a few days since the raid on the hold of the House of the Rising Sun, and the city had been abuzz with gossip and rumors about the attack. The House of…
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211 •
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Tala followed in the wake of her soldiers, her feet easily cracking through the thin layer of ice to find purchase, even with the increased surface area of her steps. She heard the sounds of brief clashes, but rarely any screams of pain. They’d brought true professionals. Tala took the main corridor to the left, towards the more elite common areas. Be-thric was heading towards the more guest centric section of the hold, as one of the candidate Eskau who was supposed to be inside was supposedly a guest…
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211 •
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Tala took a deep breath, centering herself. The City Lord was leaning towards her, clearly interested in her explanation. She had just asked him to remove her collar, allowing her to violate the ruling of the House of Blood, and he didn’t reject her outright. He scrunched his nose. “That is why your House’s council should have approved your participation. They said ‘no.’ Why should I allow you to go around their decision?” She hesitated, then reworded this first reason. “Pillar Be-thric…
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211 •
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Tala felt a bit of sadness as she took Kit from the intricate, dedicated alcove that the sanctum had rested in for the last weeks. She had learned all she could in her time in the city of Croi, though she’d basically never gone out into the city itself. Her time had been dominated by tasks and training within the hold, within the world-fragment. There were so many things that felt subtly different within this place, and she’d gotten the impression that most higher-level magics functioned better…
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211 •
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