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I. The boy had no name when he came up the mountain, dressed in the tatters of another life. A bald, smiling monk carried him the rest of the path up to monastery to spare his callused, bleeding feet. The monk and his brothers gave they boy bread and watered wine. They asked him what…
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You know my name, and you’ve heard my legend many many times. I won’t apologize for my fame or the long shadow I’ve cast over lesser adventurers. Why should I? I am Pratt. You’ve heard of my recent rescue of the Lady of Lilacs from the clutches of a sorcerer? Well, the storytellers have completely ruined…
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Salover gave his traveling companion another loaded look. The fifth of the hour. Kerin didn’t look up from his wood carving. The whistle was coming along. “What?” “You said the pass would be a shortcut. The bounty’s probably halfway across the kingdom by now.” Kerin’s knife notched another groove. “It is a shortcut though, isn’t…
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Zeb brought the oxygen. It was imported from Earth and Syl said that she could taste the toxicity of it. She was full of shit, of course, but there was something about imported O2 that left you with a mild buzz. I brought the harder stuff: rock candy, fluppers, concatenates, and a hand full of zips…
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Half the class was asleep, but the teaching assistant was undeterred. He kept droning on about renaissance painters in the darkened lecture hall while slides flashed by leisurely from the projector. Kevin shifted in his seat and stretched his back to keep focused. There were a dozen places he would rather be and art history…
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The machine took a sip of tea, as genteel as any head of state. It had smooth chrome skin with a uniformity of texture that was disconcerting to look at. Where the eye, the human eye, expected little differences, imperfections that add to the whole, there were none in evidence. It was truly a marvel….
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Max hadn’t said anything for forty-fifty miles and Remy was starting to feel the silence clawing up under his skin. He made a poker joke and Max shot him a glare so withering that he let another fifty miles go by.
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I have led nineteen campaigns of wars. I had crushed whole civilizations before my first gray hair. I have seen sunrise through the haze of smoke, the light indistinguishable from that of the fires burning across cities. I have heard the sound of prayers sent up as the people begged for their deliverance. I gave…
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Champagne and the light tinkling of conversation are like drugs to the rich, maybe it makes them feel less alone to drink in bright spaces with a soundtrack of other people as a cushion. I can’t afford to attend the gallery even though I live just a few blocks away. Instead I get dressed in…
on in
If you haven’t read the first DRM-Free, I highly suggest you do: here. It’ll give you more context about the world in which this entry takes place. Darius entered the apartment and rested his shoulder-bag on the table by the door. He tapped the side of his headset and a few notifications popped into his…