What is the point of prayer?

We ask god to make things a certain way that have been what they are all along.

Please don't let it be cancer

Please let it be mold and not a dangerous building toxin

It's not like god miraculously changes it from what it is…

The floorboards creaked with my passage, threatening to collapse, but the key is to be sure and confident - uncertainty is infectious, and many a man has died by his own hesitation. My boots did not pause until I reached my destination - Building Grachkin…

The Archangel of Sparks.

Malika had heard of this, but she had never actually witnessed it. She had never been a devout follower of the Church, and her local vicar had never, to her knowledge, before summoned an aspect of any of the three Archangels. He …

The cold in her shoulder withdrew. Malika hadn't even been aware of it until it was gone, but it eased some of the pain from her injury.

Some of the darkness from the Greater Dead leeched into your body when you struck it, Morduth said. It seeped in m…

The name given to the ship of Gwen and Bass is The Sound of Silence. In drawing the picture, I took inspiration from the Simon and Garfunkel song, and from the story of Sleepless Domain

The Inner Barrier is from the night that Alchemical met the ele…

Orthael breathed out evenly, nodding. He had known, rationally, the moment that Varreniel's Candle had snuffed out. But it was another thing entirely to hear that it confirmed, that all the wards and defenses of a cathedral of the Flame had failed against…

Malika tossed a glare at the Orthael. "Why?" she barked. "What has the All-mighty Flame ever done for me?" Her words were barbed and full of anger. Her shoulder throbbed, and she wanted nothing more than to be gone from this accursed place.

She paced o…

Mistress. Morduth's voice whispered into Malika's mind. It seemed distant, far away, echoing far back in the recesses of her consciousness. It was odd hearing him like that. Before its voice had always been so strong, so vivid.

But that was before. Bef…

The thing that spoke to me had the face of a dead god but used the voice of my father. I had known to expect this. It was a by-product of the bonding ritual that gave a semblance of life back to this former deity. Not that any of the gods ever truly died,…

Malika shivered. The events of the night still weighed heavily upon her, and it was difficult to wrap her mind around the loss of her village, the fight with the Lycanders, the destruction of the lesser deathless, and the conflict with the greater deathle…

Malika's rise to consciousness was agonizing. She needed more sleep, but her shoulder was like ice. The deathless' grip, it seemed, had not entirely relented, dragging her from the brief respite of unconsciousness.

She looked for Morduth and panicked mom…

"which flavor cheese?"

"the yellow one."

.................................

Malika took the creature's arms in two quick strokes, toying with the monster in an almost vindictive manner. Then she followed it up with a blindingly fast sweep, lopping the deathless' head from its shoulders, banishing it back to Ashmar. She could affo…

The air was crisp and the dew barely settled on the grass when Orthael left the house. He closed the door behind him with just the clink of his chain shirt and took the stairs up onto the wall two at a time - relishing the lightness of foot and freedom of…

Moments later, Malika stepped from the forest and stopped at the top of the hill looking down over her village. She could see fires burned throughout the town, set not by the deathless' attack but rather remnants of household hearths and ovens left unatte…

So by now we all know that there’s no logical explanation why honeybees can fly, weight and wings and stuff, it shouldn’t be possible, but bees fly anyway. Perhaps bees are magical creatures, then. And the drop in bees’ quantity is alarming to the wizardi…

Vexedly, I tapped the glass whose sloping walls warped and elongated the bookcases and fireplace of my study. It was dishearteningly thick, the Lessening having worked exactly to my specifications. Previously, when placing the bottle horizontally in it's …

Story is marked as mature

Malika slept restlessly that night. Her sleep was plagued by dreams of shadows and flames, the yellow infernos of building burning. Creatures moved among those flames, casting long silhouettes across the carcasses of homes that had fallen into embers. Of …

Malika did not bow her head. So far as she was concerned, faith had failed her. Her eyes had been on the holy man, his vestments - tattered as they were - and on the implements of his office. And so she saw the candle of Varenniel puff out of its own ac…

Malika looked to the holy man.

"What say you, Reliath?" she asked. "Why didn't the greater dead destroy us, as Morduth suggests?"

Orthael thought for several long moments. "I cannot say for sure," he replied. "But perhaps, while the creature is more g…

The old crone shuffled along the stacks of Building Ashrack, in no hurry to arrive at her destination. She looked at none of the row letterings, having no need for such things. She had been here many times, and she would be here many more times after. Alw…

Orthael felt the glow of satisfaction from Judgement, who had spent lifetimes as a wrath-filled harbinger of death. It had dreamed of doing more, indeed feared that it was no longer capable of anything but destruction. The Flame had swept such darkness as…

Fire blossomed through her arm, and Malika sucked air between her teeth. Blood spilled onto the sheet covering her, but the coldness in her shoulder suddenly vanished, and she sensed that it was gone for good this time. Blue flame licked up from the blade…

Orthael came back slowly, as if he had been diving in a lake and sought the surface from deep below, and found himself gripping Judgement in his right hand. This did not surprise him: he had always assumed implicit, even in the warm domestic comfort of hi…