Myron,
The Little Kyrios
Alone at sea, there was little for Myron and his stowaways to do but fish and tell stories.
Once enough time had passed for Myron to separate his own emotions from the situation, he was able to acknowledge that meeting the Deceiver and his brother had been a moment of unbelievably good fortune. If they hadn't been ther...
2025-07-03 08:04:22 +0000 UTC View PostLydia Aetos,
The Young Miss-tocrat
First light was just seeping through the wool curtains of the captain’s quarters when Lydia entered, bumping the heavy oak door open with her hip and sweeping through the room with a platter of food balanced on her left hand, a jug of water and a jug of wine tucked under her right arm, and a third jug filled with...
2025-07-01 05:06:59 +0000 UTC View Post???
A raven’s croaking wakes you.
You groan, swat blindly at it, and roll over in your bed. You were in the middle of a positively bizarre dream, and if you give it up for even a moment you know that it will be gone for good. It is not often that you sleep this deeply. Down here in the chthonic dark, separated from the burden of your body and the sufferance of you...
2025-06-27 12:25:21 +0000 UTC View PostSol,
The Raven From Rome
I still couldn't see Selene, but as I ripped and tore my way through the corpse-domain of a long-dead titan, I heard her voice in the distance—clear as crystal and sweet as mad honey.
“Bakkhos offered me the one thing that could withstand the weight of a heart flame’s burden alone,” she said. “A pillar that c...
2025-06-26 11:44:35 +0000 UTC View PostAN: There's another ~3k that goes at the end of this, but it's gettin' real late and sleep deprivation already did some weird things to this one. I'll get the other half edited and out the door soon.
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Sol,
The Raven From Rome
We sat still as stone in the embrace of the first primordial fear.
T...
2025-06-25 09:34:16 +0000 UTC View PostSol,
The Raven From Rome
The Broad strokes of it were thus:
The Civic Realm was a period of relatively carefree cultivation—the formative years in which a cultivator was punished the least for dabbling in contradictory concepts, and rewarded the most for broadening their horizons. To advance beyond that first realm, up to the first step of t...
2025-06-24 11:49:24 +0000 UTC View PostSol,
The Raven From Rome
“You may have heard these words before, but bear with me until the end. There are as many paths to heaven as there are stars in the sky, but that doesn't mean that any man or woman can walk just any path they choose. Fortune, whether good or bad, opens a thousand doors and closes a thousand-thousand more. In the days of ou...
2025-06-23 07:50:51 +0000 UTC View PostSol,
The Raven From Rome
The world went dark, so abruptly that I feared the poison had knocked me out. In the next moment, however, the sea of clouds surrounding the platform of Selene’s heart flared to life once more—brighter than before, and with a narrow focus.
Many-colored vapors still hung heavy in the air, but they drifted in purpose...
2025-06-22 08:56:40 +0000 UTC View PostSol,
The Raven From Rome
"You've seen it for yourself now," Selene spoke up from the central dais. She smiled. "Though you'll need context to make any sense of the why that stands before you."
The Saint of Scarlet Hearts waved her hands invitingly, urging us back to the saltwater pool her tripod sat inside. Griffon and I shared a glan...
2025-06-21 10:21:47 +0000 UTC View PostSol,
The Raven From Rome
Griffin had already moved past the second column and on to the third by the time I pried myself away from this first flawed ideal.
The scarlet marble of Selene’s soul was cool beneath my feet, free of any imperfections. No matter how much I tried to set the thought aside and focus on the actual lesson she was trying ...
2025-06-20 11:11:22 +0000 UTC View PostSol,
The Raven From Rome
It was a nostalgic feeling, marching outside myself again.
Selene had been right to assume that gravitas would allow me to function within the boundaries of her soul. She had been right, right enough that it made me wonder. What else did she suspect about the captain’s virtue? It wasn’t a connection the av...
2025-06-20 11:09:27 +0000 UTC View PostGriffon,
The Risen Flame
Sol’s eyes shut, his chin dipping down to his chest. His shoulders shifted all but imperceptibly, moved by a sigh that the Roman did his best to stifle. It was the reaction of a man that was all too used to being disappointed by his mentors, a man that was far too considerate of them in spite of that. As the student of a m...
2025-06-20 11:01:49 +0000 UTC View PostSol,
The Raven From Rome
The haggling carried on long into the evening.
Beyond the bare basics that every mentor of a young patrician was owed, Selene was to be my master in cultivation. That demanded more. Her hallowed status of Oracle, anointed or not, demanded more still. She was a Heroic soul, standing head and shoulders above my own Sophi...
2025-06-20 11:00:32 +0000 UTC View PostSol,
The Raven From Rome
In the end, we didn’t turn the ship around.
There were practical reasons. The whirlpool that had nearly sunk us, for one. I thought I had the trick of navigating it now, having watched the solar barge, but that ship had been moving with the current. Even if Griffon, Selene, and I all added our full strength ...
2024-03-20 23:18:27 +0000 UTC View PostThis is my first attempt at a litRPG story. It's not great, but then again, I'm trying not to split too many hairs with this one. I'm pretty new to the genre, so feel free to let me know if you have any suggestions (or warn me if I'm committing any unforgivable litRPG sins). For those wondering, the next chapter of Virtuous Sons is nearly done. Should have it out soon, god willing.
'Til t...
2024-03-05 11:08:47 +0000 UTC View PostApologies for the radio silence. Holidays and a cross-country move have been kicking my ass, but that's all over with now. Going to do my damnedest to get back into the swing of things and power through this arc starting tonight. You've all certainly waited long enough.
'Til then, enjoy.
Griffon,
The Risen Flame 2024-01-21 06:56:49 +0000 UTC View Post
Sol,
The Raven From Rome
Echoes.
In the false light of a Roman pre-dawn, on the first morning of my married life, my wife took me by the shoulders and shook me out like an old toga. In the gray light of the coming dawn, I saw those schemes shining in her eyes and knew that I was lost. Her smile was devious, her braided chestnut hair and silken...
2023-11-17 00:23:10 +0000 UTC View PostScythas,
The Hurricane Harvester
“Look at what they did to us.”
Jason sighed and turned back to his raft. Lefteris and Kyno stared at him from across the beach, that same wariness to them as there had been in Elissa. Like he’d bleed liquid lead if they cut him. Elissa faced the waves that had claimed her blade, but he knew she was listen...
2023-11-03 04:08:27 +0000 UTC View PostScythas,
The Hurricane Harvester
When Scythas woke, the sun had risen behind a curtain of ash. The Sanctuary City of Olympia had been reduced to an airborne miasma, a sickly yellow film that tainted the morning skies. It reminded him of the extra set of eyelids that some beasts had, thin enough to see through yet thick enough to smear. The film was ...
2023-11-03 04:06:13 +0000 UTC View PostBORN TO WRITE
STORY IS A FUCK
Kill Em All 199th Olympiad
I am trash author
410,757,864,530 DEAD GODS
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Selene, Saint of Scarlet Hearts
Selene had met more than her fair share of...
2023-09-20 22:44:40 +0000 UTC View PostGriffon, the Risen Flame
The day I watched my cousin’s golden mother die, a question had taken root in my mind. No matter how completely I’d tried to suppress it, utterly uncaring of my efforts, that uncertainty had remained - festering somewhere in the shadow of the soul that every man feared to shine light upon. Years had passed, and I had met Sol. I’d allowed mys...
2023-07-01 17:55:46 +0000 UTC View PostSol, The Raven from Rome
I moved silently through their ranks, looking the sailors up and down. They stood frozen, waiting for something, the same thing that I was searching for in them. The closer that I looked, the more wretched that they seemed. Still too thin. Still too filthy and unkempt. All of them too crude, and not a single awakened soul to be found among them. 2023-06-12 04:31:08 +0000 UTC View Post
Sol, The Raven from Rome
Cultivation.
The race against mortality went by many names, depending on who was asked and where. The people of Rome knew it as the course of honors. The children of Helen called it the stairway to heaven, and the hollow Macedonians referred to it mournfully as the hitching of their stars. I had learned these terms, among others, from my men...
2023-06-12 04:03:02 +0000 UTC View PostCaesarion
“Beware, cultivator. Your sins are set in stone.”
Caesarion knelt upon the cool marble of a dead man’s dias, back straight and regally poised. His words were carefully measured, his voice a royal tone. Shadows of painted gold encircled both of his eyes, blending seamlessly with their outer rings - gold, where a common man’s eyes were white, and pur...
2023-05-28 22:12:15 +0000 UTC View PostThe Stark Blade, Nikolas Aetos
Niko stared at the burning nightmare that had once been Olympia's dock town, and not for the first time, he wondered if his world was ending.
Closer to the clouds, their feet planted firmly on the deck of the Alikonia - higher than they would have been in the crow's nest of the Eos - they had a commanding view of the wreckage. With vis...
2023-05-24 18:40:38 +0000 UTC View PostOne of two epilogue chapters to wrap up the Olympia Arc, then we're off to safer shores. Enjoy.
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The war for the indigo throne was over. A cold conflict until the very last moment, eight elders of the Raging Heaven Cult had clashed in lethal violence - every one of them reaching for that empty seat, and its dominion over the beating heart of the free Mediterranean. Eight Tyrants ...
2023-05-14 04:55:06 +0000 UTC View PostThis isn't a Virtuous Sons chapter, just a little snapshot I wrote for a 1k contest in the discord server. I'll have the next VS chapter up sometime tomorrow.
'Til then.
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The Fair Folk Went Down To Georgia
Gold is for the mistress - silver for the maid
...
2023-05-07 01:55:28 +0000 UTC View PostGriffon, The Risen Flame
The fight was ours to end.
I could see it in their eyes and feel it in their hearts. It was arrogant of me to think it, absurdly so, but I could plainly see the truth of it. These men and women, these impossible glories, they were breaking apart. Their hearts and minds were steadily unraveling, and the more we stripped away from them the qui...
2023-04-30 16:31:19 +0000 UTC View PostLefteris, the Gold-String Guardian
His boys were dead.
You must take aim, Polyhymnia urged him.
His boys were dead, and their killers were walking free.
Nock the arrow! I shall guide it!
His boys were dead, and it was his fault that they’d died. In his greed, Lefteris had allowed himself to be swayed from his conviction...
2023-04-22 19:51:56 +0000 UTC View Post“Away with you! Begone! I’ll suffer no more!”
An Unkindness
The children of Helen were still transfixed by the stark pillar of light bisecting the earth and skies when the tragedies began.
Across the Free Mediterranean, from the furthest colonies of the cardinal reaches - southernmost Egypt, easternmost Anatolia, northernmost Thracia, and wester...
2023-04-22 18:29:11 +0000 UTC View Post