Sorting
through the mists of thought and impulse, it suddenly occurred to
Claire that she should not be picking through weeping conceptual
abstractions in the middle of a petrified forest. She could only have
been dreaming, she realized, and upon realizing this she did all that
was within her power to stop, clawing through the haze of slumber
back toward reality. Dreaming in Tallowheight had always been a risky
business, perhaps more so than any place in strange old Krael, but
drunken carousing

The
Scarlet Saint stood before the solemn gathering. Behind her was a
yawning, rectangular pit, above her was the ancient lunkun tree that
marked this holiest of sites. Her silken robes clung tightly to the
wide curve of her hips and the soft swell of her belly, the latter
still faintly grumbling with the last of a recent meal. The mourners,
black-clad with their faces hidden behind laughing masks, shifted
uncomfortably on occasion but could not be heard to sob or weep. In
Krael, they lamented t

Narr
growled like a caged beast as his jailors approached. He been
languishing in his cell for days, perhaps even weeks. He had long
since lost count, consumed as he was by his own seething bitterness.
As two dour-faced ogres entered his cell, he resisted the urge to
strike them, assuming they were here to take him before the usurper
and allow him to speak his piece. By the time their hammers fell upon
him, it was too late for him to strike back. They slammed into his
chest, his cheek, the backs

“Let me see if I understand you correctly...”
Without Judith, Emilia felt especially vulnerable. When Emilia felt
vulnerable, she became snappy and self-important. The slim,
dark-haired older woman who had shown up at their apartment
unannounced seemed thoroughly unamused, but this didn’t keep Emilia
from posturing. Emilia had been given a lucrative offer, and she
received it as suspiciously as she dared. When she spoke, her tone
was thick with an almost childish sort of skepticism. “If

[contains f/f postvore, a small gay nerd being cute with her buff gf,
and the tiniest bit of implied scat at the end.]
It was unlike Judith to go out at nine in the evening and stumble
back home a full twelve hours later, still working off the last of
several gin cocktails. Fumbling with her keys, Judith looked no more
pleased about it than she imagined her roommate would be. Her
countenance was often dour, more so now with the anticipation of a
hangover, and to find herself impotently stabbing