MerionKane

There are many who say no news is good news. But if someone told me that right now I’d have more than a passing thought to bite them, and not playfully. It’s been 14 days since I sent Lucia that note, and there’s been no reply. I’m sure you know me well enough by now to guess that my mind immediately flew to the worst case scenario, but I take the time to remind myself that any number of things could have happened. Maybe she just had to re-relocate and hasn’t had the chance to check on account of how busy she’s been. That’s what I tell myself for now, resigning myself to getting on with my day again. In that same vein, I resign myself to the idea that I probably won’t have much time to entertain any recreational reading. On my way out, I conjure the book on the spiderfolk of Kiue out of storage one last time, setting it on a return cart and showing myself out. I thought briefly about sending a note to Nym about my new theory, in regards to what might be in his brother’s office, but

Have you ever left a particularly dismal news broadcast on and sunk deeper and deeper into a pit of self-made despair even though you could get up and turn it off at any time? This is like that, except for the part about being able to turn it off. Jeden, the lively and surprisingly un-swarthy port town I arrived in continental Nayrean territory by way of, is a rubble heap now. The voice of Warden Oleander, the wolverine whose privacy we thoroughly violated if you recall, regales the city with a scathing report of the atrocities committed by the Prelature. I’m horrified by it, and yet not surprised. The history of the Nayre Dominion and the Grym Prelature is the history of constantly doing worse and worse to the other, and after the former’s recently used tactic of infesting the latter’s crop soil with cradleworm eggs, the fear of scorched earth tactics is an entirely rational one. Then there’s the incident at the Archives. I suspect I’m still in the clear, as I’ve faced no

I am somewhere warm. It’s dark, and there is no air to breathe, as a thick fluid rests heavy around me. I have to get out. I’m not safe here, something is coming for me, from all directions. I can feel how sorry it is, for what it’s about to do to me, but its will is undeniable and I’m about to be ripped from my leathery sanctuary, just like everyone. I spasm as I feel pain shoot through my body. In double vision I take in my surroundings, I’m not there anymore. My hands are strapped to the edges of a slab, fingers gnarled. I can feel that instinctual, hated bloodlust that seethes out of my shock but I’m thankfully secured too tightly to act on it. I think this is the first time I’ve been cognizant of it in the moment, like I’ve receded into my skull to study it as it takes control from me. Someone leans in; I think it’s Nym, but he’s masked up in olive drab, wearing scrubs with a built-in full face covering. Someone else is here too; he is staring intently at me as he handles a

Go ahead and call me a fool, you’d be well within your right to, but we’re still doing it. Kyra was smarter than to agree to it, of course. Let’s get you up to speed, actually. Three days ago I said something like “Hey Kyra, wanna help me steal something?” And she said something like “Hell yeah, property is for theft, what are we stealing?” So I told her “Oh, you know, just some ultra-classified documents right out of Warden Oleander’s own personal archive,” and that killed basically all her enthusiasm right then and there. It should have killed mine, and yet, here I am, staring out at that imposing tower on the far side of the canal, its offshoots and challenges to the assumption of what one is meant to be able to do with concrete casting an odd shadow. It stretches out onto the surface of the dearsenated water standing between it and myself, as the rippling, liquid fake sun reflects from behind it, dim enough to look directly at. Paliputra doesn’t tilt on its axis enough to have