The KAI-800 unit detected the micro-tremors in Harue’s hand as she reached for her cup of lukewarm sencha. Silent on its magnetic casters, Kai glided across the tatami flooring and intercepted the yunomi teacup. “Allow me, Harue-san.” Its voice was a synthesized baritone, calibrated to the resonant frequency of Buddhist temple bells and found to…
Fifteen years. I count them by converting Standard to Gregorian badly while my feet move forward without me. It’s been fifteen years since I’ve seen another human and here’s one at the Stones on Ferocina underneath the glowing rings and stars, swirling a red gourd-bottle while he stares into the bonfire like a human would,…
“I am not a necromancer,” I repeat, blood dripping off my chin with patters of splat splat splat onto the reports spilling across the interrogation table. “I’m a doctor. Just a doctor.” “Mm,” the interrogator purrs. Red flecks from the events of the past half hour speckle the words on her badge: Necrohunter Tess Belmont,…
The glade stretched out before me, bathed beneath a dappled azure sky. Flowers blossomed in the high grass, crimson poppies and sunshine flares of dandelions peering through thick tangles of green. The day was warm and the air was full of the scent of the forest, which waited, cloaked in shade, through a gap in…
You are the king’s champion, and have been for years. Everybody knows of your skill, your seeming ability to read your opponents’ movements before even they know what they’ll do. What nobody knows, however, is that in that open space of anticipation between exhalation and inhalation, in that space between breaths, people’s minds are completely…
