“You said you had orders for me, sir.”
A full text transcript can be found on the FoxFireFiction blog (on accounts it won't fit into a Locals.com post), here: https://www.foxfirefiction.com/2022/02/13/axes-and-lightning/
Art stream time! In this one I played with a new way of doing architecture and its shading, stumbling my way through new tools as I did so. This would probably work better in a vector program where I can make the shapes perfectly clean. Not an art I'll keep, but a learning experience.
I'm having a very productive week!
Here's the sketching phase, perhaps the most fun of the art phases aside from coloring in plate armor. Since each of these weas only about 5 minutes long, I combined them into one video.
Three World of Warcraft comics! Titles will probably be, oh, I dunno...Exception!, Siqsa's Eulogy, and Three Cloth Boots (Socks).
If you're interested in seeing the completed comics, as well as an explanation for how I got started on these, check out my blog!
https://www.foxfirefiction.com/series/comic-resurgence/
https://www.foxfirefiction.com/series/comic-gentlemen-assassins/
The akor’mar occupation of Sun-On-The-Lake was not a certain thing by any means. On the outside, it appeared as if Sun-On-The-Lake had always been an akor’mar city, for all the wuyon’mari you saw out in the open. The akor’mari sung and celebrated and began to build up rudimentary dwellings for themselves -- and for their prisoners – as if it was nothing more exciting than carving out a new market cavern back in Vuzsdin.
Yet in the alleyways and abandoned corners of the city, there was still danger. We may have occupied the main roads and the Palace, but the rest was free-for-all. At night we were safe enough; we could see in the dark better than the wuyon’mari, and they knew it. During the day, though, where the sun stung our eyes, they came out to harass us. There were ambushes and raids and assassinations. Daily we were warned by our officers about places still held by the wuyon’mari, where they had taken pains to dig out the cobblestones and plant pitfalls or other kinds of traps. The ...
The next few weeks — or was it months? — after the fall of Sun-On-The-Lake was a blur to me. The akor’mari set up shop within the city itself, repairing some of the buildings and walls, making them battle-ready. I don't know if they planned on living in the city once it was cleaned out, or if it was simply to be a temporary headquarters for the rest of our operations in Nah’Ke’tzin. They acted as if they expected retaliation.
The rest of the army was housed in tents, set up wherever there was space for them. I slept in Sus'syri’s tent during the days, half because that's how cramped the available lodging was, and half because... I felt different somehow. And somehow, she could understand.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been the sort to be in the middle of attention. I talked lots, laughed lots, told stories. I had many friends -- or at least people I would speak with regularly; I know the word does not mean the same thing in your language. Still, I enjoyed their presence and would...
Some of the army's excitement waned as we stumbled our way through the twisting forest paths of Lesser Nah’Ke’tzin: now tame Surfacer forests of beech and oak. Scouts like myself had chosen a path that took us in a circuitous route around Rising Heath, and we could let our guard down for the first time since we had come in from the ships. We marched in single file along deer trails, stepping in each others’ footsteps, moving only like the akor’mari can with complete silence, as if we were all playing Stalk-the-Nekru in the close tunnels of our homeland. I wondered then if we had only been taught those games to prepare us for something like this, not just our own childish amusement.
Our nerves and the excitement came back all at once when we finally found ourselves up on the gray cliffs overlooking Sun-On-The-Lake. It was just past dawn, and we could see the waters of the city’s namesake, Lake Ta’hiki, through the mist.
I have been to that city in the years since the war, and it is now not ...
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(For our Locals folks! With the release of Locals.com Articles functionality we are also looking into releasing the full novel here, hopefully within the next couple weeks.)
https://www.foxfirefiction.com/2023/06/15/the-hottest-day-of-the-year/
“You’d better be right about this,” the Commander growled as she looked down at the pair of shrouded bodies resting in a place of honor in the middle of the great hall. So far, no one else had been allowed in to see them, not even family: she could faintly hear the bawling of one or another of Neddryn’s relatives down the hall, and it irritated her. “For your plan, I may have lost two good soldiers today. ”
When she woke up in the Division’s infirmary, the tall hall was strangely empty. Beds lined the walls, including one with a memorial to the Ghost etched into the stone above it. Sparrow smiled at that, now knowing for whom it was named...
Yet the sheer emptiness of the place echoed, like dust dancing in a beam of sunlight or like the dull, black ache she also felt echoing inside of her. Shadow to light, light to shadow: it was like mourning, or the darkness between stars.
A healer she didn’t know came in to check on her later, briefly, taking her vitals and straightening the covers for her. Sparrow didn’t have the breath to ask any questions, even if she had wanted to. The silence, the emptiness, it all seemed to encourage sleep, for Sparrow to sink down into darkness and submit to...what was down there? Certainly not the Shadow, she thought. Althrasia had been defeated. Somehow she knew that, with all her heart, even though she hadn’t seen Althrasia die personally.
Why else would she be in the infirmary, though, if Althrasia had won?
Hours passed, or was it days? She flitted in and out of consciousness. She didn’t see the healer again. She knew, though, on waking a final time, that she had to report in to Commander Hale about the success of her mission. Tentatively Sparrow pushed herself to her feet and limped out of the infirmary.
Sparrow lingered in the great hall of the castle, standing before the great statue of Freeport’s leader, the Mogul. She was reluctant to face the commander, even though she would be returning in triumph, of a sort. Althrasia had been defeated. The Shadow and her undead armies were no longer a threat. The Singing City would be indebted to the Division, and perhaps would now accept the Mogul’s rule without compunction.
Yet at what cost… she didn’t want to think of it, of the rules the Mogul would bind the La’aln people to. So she avoided the thought, like she avoided her meeting with Commander Hale.
