Hey everyone, the TBATE novel will be on hiatus for the month of June. This isn’t a formal “break” but more so giving myself time to write out more chapters for the final arc of the series to end the story strong. If you’re a member of the Patreon, feel free to pause for the month since there won’t be any new chapter releases in June. For those who stick around, thank you in advance f...
2025-05-20 22:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostARTHUR LEYWIN
The portal was not instant or frictionless. It was not biting and painful like the one that had trapped us. Instead, I was stretched across an impossible distance, one foot in the aetheric realm, the other stretching toward the physical world.
My eyes bulged. My heart thundered. Blood swelled my temples, threatening to burst my skull.
...
2025-05-16 17:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostJI-AE
I pulled back, retracting my presence from the Relictombs’ edge.
My systems flickered with the light and energy that formed and maintained this projection of my conscious mind. Crystal now replaced the soft gray matter that once held my thoughts, memories, and personality. And why? Why had those of us who would stay behind do so? All of djinn-kind had given ...
2025-05-09 17:00:37 +0000 UTC View PostSYLVIE LEYWIN
Before taking that step, I slammed the shutters between Arthur’s mind and mine. I couldn’t explain the river’s pull on me, and I feared what it might do to him if our thoughts were still intertwined when I entered its currents. Suddenly assaulting him with indecipherable input while he was fighting off this creature might be his unmaking. Much...
2025-05-02 17:01:48 +0000 UTC View PostAs I turned around to look at the world, all I saw was smoke and ruin.
2025-05-01 19:00:10 +0000 UTC View PostARTHUR LEYWIN
The crystal curtain passed, hard and cold, over my skin. The sundering of reality twisted my intestines. Distant pain, like the projection of a sensation suffered by someone else, ached deep behind my eyes. Frigid discomfort…there was nothing else. I tried to blink, expecting my vision to snap back into place or slowly fade in like an old black-and-white f...
2025-04-25 17:00:56 +0000 UTC View PostThe novel is coming to print! Follow our Kickstarter campaign to stay updated!
Happy Friday!
Just a quick heads up–there won’t be a new novel chapter on 4/18, as I ramp things up for Sakura-Con next weekend. I’ll be doing two panels and two signings, so I hope to see some of you there! Thank you again for your understanding during this busy season. I really appreciate your patience and support!
2025-04-11 19:24:29 +0000 UTC View PostCHUL ASCLEPIUS
My laughter boomed through the frigid mountains as the blows of my enemies rained down upon me. “You. Are. As. Ants. Before the might of the Asclepius!” I roared, reaching out and taking a horned head in my hand.
My back was pinned against the mountainside, which crumbled under the weight of our glorious combat. I batted aside the pummeling spells...
2025-04-11 17:00:19 +0000 UTC View PostCAERA DENOIR
Shit!
The ground erupted at my side, lifting me into the air and sending me spinning. My crest flared, and wind pushed at my shoulders and heels, righting me before I touched down lightly onto the churned soil of the battlefield.
Mana ignited in my Dicathian regalia, and illusory smoke and flames wrapped around me, disguising my physical form befo...
2025-04-04 17:00:13 +0000 UTC View Post
It’s been a long journey. This October, it will be ten years since I started writing The Beginning After the End. A lot has happened along the way, from the story being adapted into a webcomic to me getting married, adopting two dogs, and even facing a near-death experience. Now, TBATE has officially become an anime.
With any new medium comes uncertainty, and the...
2025-04-02 22:24:36 +0000 UTC View PostI clenched my fists as I focused on my new god rune.
Thirty feet in front of us, at the same point demarcated by the opposing Alacryan army’s previously conjured shields, space hardened.
A thousand spells—sickly green jets of acid, dark motes of void wind, winged summons of blue fire—struck the impassible space and ruptured, a chaotic entanglement of combusting magic like a ba...
2025-03-28 17:00:13 +0000 UTC View PostWhat followed was a mad rush of preparation.
I bid the Glayders farewell before they quickly returned to Etistin to organize and prepare their own troops. Emily Watsken rushed off in order to oversee the set-up and activation of all newly designed long-range teleportation units—the ones modeled after Nico’s design—in order to allow a rapid dissemination of Beast Corps pilots across ...
2025-03-21 17:00:16 +0000 UTC View Post"I still think it’s a gross failure of Arthur’s creativity that I wasn’t given a couple of bazookas attached to my sides."
2025-03-19 17:39:41 +0000 UTC View PostTime slipped by like water running between my fingers. I was lying on my back in the moss, staring up at the thin canopy of Virion’s small grove. Tessia lay in the crook of my arm, her head on my chest, her fingers tracing the line of my sternum, over my core. The sensation sent warm chills down my arms in a way I found pleasantly exhilarating.
“I can feel your core,” she said softl...
2025-03-14 17:00:10 +0000 UTC View PostYour timing couldn’t be better. I know what a risk it is for you, and I thank you for it.
2025-03-12 19:00:08 +0000 UTC View PostIt was a strange sensation, walking back into Indrath’s grand hall. I had only just left it, and yet the entire landscape of both worlds had changed in the space of an hour. We had not only failed to capture Agrona, but he had struck back, tearing open the rift that connected Epheotus’s pocket dimension to the physical world. Although my new godrune was no longer active, I could still feel ...
2025-03-07 18:00:10 +0000 UTC View PostMyre nodded and took a step back. “For Sylvia.”
2025-03-06 00:58:32 +0000 UTC View PostARTHUR LEYWIN
Kezess turned his back on the great wound in the sky, his eyes flashing like lightning as they swept across the other great lords and myself. “Come,” was all he said before his aether started to wrap around all of us.
I felt myself being dragged away and looked down at Ellie. Gritting my teeth, I resisted Kezess’s pull. “What are you doing?”<...
2025-02-28 18:00:17 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 508: Wounded
ARTHUR LEYWIN
“A trick. Of course,” Morwenna said, her lips pursed, her stiff posture even more rigid than usual. “We should have known.”
Rai Kothan was pale. Agrona’s capture had been a way to help heal the basilisks and their relationship with the rest of Epheotus. I could practically see the calculations being ra...
2025-02-07 18:01:52 +0000 UTC View PostHey everyone,
You may have seen on our social media that the TBATE comic is going on a 2-week break to give our hardworking production team time to recharge during Lunar New Year ^^
The novel will also be going on a 2-week break on both Tapas and Patreon and return on 2/28.
I know breaks can be disappointing, so I appreciate your patience and support. I ...
2025-02-06 17:15:00 +0000 UTC View PostAGRONA VRITRA
“My people of Alacrya.”
My voice projected out through the networks of psychically resonant antennas, crystalline receivers, and mental projection artifacts interspersed carefully across the continent. The projected images currently being fed into the system froze in place, seizing and distorting just as Khaernos, a hollow visage in m...
2025-01-31 18:01:22 +0000 UTC View PostJI-AE
My crystalline nerves flared, jittery and on edge.
I didn’t like it when my High Sovereign left Taegrin Caelum.
This was his fortress, his domain, and I was here to protect him. Our net of runes was spread wide, covering Alacrya and most of Dicathen, but this only allowed me to follow along with his progress. I couldn’t help him...
2025-01-24 18:00:15 +0000 UTC View PostARTHUR LEYWIN
I clenched and unclenched my regrown left hand as we waited for the grand hall to be opened. All twenty of those sent on the hunt were gathered, plus Boo and Regis. The young asuras were quiet and almost reverent. Beside me, Chul carried the small white remains of the beast on a plum-purple cushion. It had been carefully arrayed to look as if it could...
2025-01-17 18:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post"... I thought perhaps our clans were growing closer. I admit I’m disappointed to be proven wrong.”
2025-01-16 20:38:41 +0000 UTC View PostCAERA DENOIR
I gave the young man a pat on the back, then stepped away. His smile was grateful but weary, and more than a little sick. Still, he did smile. It was something. When he stepped up to the tempus warp, housed within the cavernous lobby of Cargidan’s central library, the mousy-haired mage who was to conduct this last transmission spoke sof...
2025-01-10 18:00:08 +0000 UTC View PostThe blood was divided, shattered, at war with itself. “Just like the rest of Alacrya,” I muttered into the breeze.
2025-01-09 20:52:14 +0000 UTC View PostFor a moment, the mountainside dell seemed frozen, time unmoving.
The focus of our hunt loomed above me, now truly colossal in size. Four craning necks extended upward sixty feet or more from a bulbous, distended body. Six trunk-like limbs supported the creature’s bulk, each one ending in a webbed, clawed foot. A pair of fleshy, avian claws reached forward from its chest, wicked ...
2025-01-03 18:00:10 +0000 UTC View PostARTHUR LEYWIN
“There, get it!”
One of the young phoenixes let out an animalistic crow as he sent a fiery shape like a bird of prey scorching through the trees. A large mana beast with a green and brown mottled hide bolted from where it had been concealed within the undergrowth. The phoenix’s spell curved in the air, flew in between the beast’s ...
2024-12-27 18:00:13 +0000 UTC View PostAs a thank you for your support, we’re sharing a 30% off code for the Patreon Shop for the Lances.
You can use the code LANCE30 at checkout to use the discount. The offer is available until December 27 at 11:59 PM PT.
A quick note: Patreon doesn’t allow product prices to drop below $3, so the di...
2024-12-20 23:33:08 +0000 UTC View Post