WarbyPicus

Vol. 4 Chap. 16 Looking Down On Those Who Wish To Be Deceived

The undersea journey was uneventful. Truth watched Butler train the former desk clerk. He realized that, if he had ever heard their name, he had forgotten it. He had enough self awareness to realize that he was deliberately dehumanizing him. Turning him into an “it,” another one of his bound demons. Another weapon to use in his war. It didn’t feel good. Which was a Hell of a moral line to draw for someone who had committed multiple atrocities.

Butler relied primarily on the basics of the basics- illusion. The former person (compo...

Since the Vote Was Overwhelming...

Welcome to the first weekly newsletter! The exact format and contents will evolve over time, just to make sure that it stays relevant and doesn't become a burden.

News- Book one has been out for a few weeks now. Sales seem ok, but we are crucially short on reviews and ratings. Anything you could do to help would be appreciated. Vol. 2 is available for pre-order. Vol. 3 continues to be underway. Progress is steady, which is a relief given that the holiday season tends to play hell with any sort of scheduling.

2023-11-24 17:06:54 +0000 UTC View Post

Vol. 4 Chap. 15 Packing For Home

Truth left the ritual room a little stifled. He still had questions for Merkovah. Many, many questions. About cultivation, about Cup and Knife, about the nature of reality, about ethics, philosophy, theology, politics… about everything. Just having someone he could talk to about these things was immense. Someone he might disagree with, but who had spent half a millennium studying and learning about the world.

Merkovah had always made a point of his private tuition being included as part of Truth’s compensation package. The irreplac...

Vol. 4 Chap. 14 I Didn't Forget

“About that…”

“Yes?” Merkovah asked.

“I found Vig.”

There was a long pause on the line.

“Tell me everything.”

Truth did so, including how frustrating he found not making contact. Merkovah sounded relieved at the end of it.

“You handled that exactly right. Exactly right. In theory, it might have been better not following him, but this adds another layer of plausibility to the illusion of a vast nationalist uprising.”

“Great, super.”

Merkovah sighed. “Sorry. That was i...

Vol. 4 Chap. 13 The Lone Wolf's Pack

Truth was in a mood the rest of the evening. It was the scope of everything. The sheer enormity of what the System would mean to Jeon. There was one major difference, on paper at least, between what Jeon was planning and what Starbrite did. When you joined Starbrite, at least in theory, you had the country to protect you if the System Astrologica screwed you over. With this? The screwing was baked right in, and there was no appeal.

He could see it all laid out. You were born into a certain class. You had the potential to move up, but i...

Vol. 4 Chap. 12 A Public Convenience

Truth ran through a number of options, before concluding that the fastest way to find out how the credit change-over would work was to just go and ask a banker. No need for any elaborate ruses, and really, nothing of benefit would come from just summoning some senior banker to his room through Mary. Assuming one would come for her at all.

“Attend me.” The maid quickly stood before him. Looking demure. Vulnerable. He kind of wished it would knock it off, but that was like wishing water would be less wet. “Arrange a sedan chair to ...

Vol. 4 Chap. 11 Uncomplicated

Truth slammed into motion. No use trying to play invisible with a couple dozen cops in the hall running every detection spell they could. He was The Big Bro. The last villain they would ever see. Unstoppable.

The ones coming through the front were a little closer. He went for them first. A few bolts of paralytic lightning were loosed, slapped aside by the Tongue. He was on them in less than a second. Wrenched aside a riot shield, put his blade through the cop’s neck, then fung him, shield and all, straight down the hallway. He crouch...

Vol. 4 Chap. 10 The Old Medici Touch

Truth watched Vig working from a distance. The lady was just barely the wrong side of pretty, and just barely the wrong side of too old, at least next to Vigor. Vig had dressed down, drab clothes cut not too flatteringly. There was no hiding those eyes, though. The smokey darkness of them, like dried opium, promised an inescapable dream and terrible consequences.

Without a doubt, Vigor had seduced the older woman, and the older woman was convinced she was a bad person for preying on him. The question was, why? Vigor had vanished, appar...

Would you be interested in behind-the-scenes type content?

Basically trying to guage interest in something akin to blog posts where I talk about how I approach writing, sources I am drawing on, what philosophers and historical figures I am looking at, that kind of thing. I'm thinking it would be once a week, and would include updates on things like the book releases, any new projects I may be working on, and the like.

Vol. 4 Chap. 9 To Elevate and Bring Low

Truth woke to fiendish luxury, stretched indulgently, and sighed contentedly. He took a moment to contemplate what to do with the day. He examined his hand. Long, strong fingers. Well shaped. No scars, which should be impossible but he chalked it up to the Meditations and the odd skincare benefits from the Ghul baptisms. In a word- aristocratic. The hands of a warrior prince.

Incisive was getting, for lack of a better term, sticky. He had noticed it for a while now. As long as he wasn’t pushing hard on the foresight or the fangs, he ...

Vol. 4 Chap. 8 Active Leasure

Truth quickly considered Mary’s request. He was The Prince, and the core of the Prince was power- the power to rule over others. This meant securing the willing cooperation of his lessers. His personal dignity, his glory, therefore mattered a great deal. Without it, they would not be obedient. The other thing was fortune, but that was a matter for another time.

So what to do about Mary’s grandson? Delegate. Make his people problem someone else’s problem. Because nothing says personal power like putting other people to work.

Vol. 4 Chap. 7 Testing The Cushions on the Throne

Truth woke up. Or not. There was a long moment, impossible to say how long, where he lay in bed paralyzed by the sensation of unreality. The keening scream of the System faded into a high-pitched whine as every object he could perceive, every sensation he experienced, became illusory. As real as it ever was, which, for a time, was no more real than a toddler’s sketch of their bedroom.

Truth drew a convulsive, deep breath through his nose and cast Incisive as hard as he could. He didn’t adopt the guise of the Young Master, he impose...

Vol. 4 Chap. 6 The Goddess of the Night

The boat sailed down the wide, twilight street, cheered on by the entire polis. The sail was nothing less than the peplos that would adorn the giant statue of the goddess, lovingly embroidered over the course of the year to show her triumph over the giants. The boat was pulled along by hidden mechanisms under the street. A mechanism whose ingenuity exceeded the wisdom of all other peoples. For their goddess was the goddess of wisdom and war, and she had blessed her favored city generously.

Leading the procession to the temple ...

Vol. 4 Chap. 5 A Man Without Compassion

The Prince appeared without warning. The supposedly locked door to Mary’s Garden opened, the recording talismans unable to capture his radiance. Tall, hair the color of a moonless night, eyes like black wells with drifting golden stars in the depths.

Dressed in exquisite yet casual clothing that clung to his tall, perfectly proportioned frame. Muscular without being grotesque, he was violence and sensuality made flesh. The Prince was entirely failing to keep with the softer, more androgynous standards of masculine beauty in Jeon. And...

Vol. 4 Chap. 4 A Certain Kind of Way

Truth picked the first recliner and got comfortable. Then convulsively shivered and got even more comfortable. This might well be the single most comfortable chair he had ever sat in. Supportive, yet soft. Ergonomically designed to make you feel almost weightless, as the body weight is distributed and diffused through the dense cushions. He didn’t know what material it was upholstered with. It felt soft, softer than velvet, and even more smooth. He even liked the sage green color.

“Are the chairs for sale?”

“I believe the...

Vol. 4 Chap. 3 Boys on the Docks

Conjin felt off. Not in the sense of it being a trap, in the sense that Truth couldn’t feel the logic of the place. The geography threw him. It was another instance of Truth's education not giving him the language to describe something he intuitively experienced. All he could articulate was that the lack of a ring road felt weird. The sharply tapered triangle of the city narrowed as it ran inland, with the bulk stretching along the concave curve of the coast. It felt alien. Off. A city built for some inhuman purpose.

He jogged into t...

Vol. 4 Chap. 2 A Certain Airiness

Truth had never expected life to be fair. The concept had never occurred to him. It did, however, seem noticeably unfair that he kept finding himself running through the countryside in search of pants. Not that he was hung up on nudity, exactly. He had come to understand that his weirdness with Etenesh was more a first-girlfriend thing and less a body image thing. It’s just that, growing up, people wore clothes. Even the people who took off their clothes professionally kept them on almost all the time. It was just common sense. If...

Vol. 4 Chap. 1 The Ecology of Life and Death

Truth kept quiet. There wasn’t any benefit to lying to the seniors, but he didn’t know what to say, either. The mists had enclosed the hot spring now, the green trees on the mountain had blurred into nothing. The jutting stones now looked like looming demons coming out of the mist. Ironic, really.

“Well, it’s something to do. It’s become our passion.” The big man’s grin inspired unpleasant questions about what else he was passionate about.

“It pushes us to continue improving and perfecting our art.” The elegant ...

Vol. 3 Chap. 65 Living National Treasures

Truth kept his breathing steady. Incisive hadn’t warned him, so these two were not a threat. Probably. At least for the next few fractions of a second. They looked melted in the hot water of the springs.

The outdoor bath was enormous, larger than the hotel it was attached to. Cristal clear blue water covered wide, flat stones. Here and there, boulders rose from the steaming water, adding even more charm to the scene. The pool narrowed at the back, where the spring rose from the mountain, and widened out as it reached the waterfall th...

Vol. 3 Chap. 64 On The Side Of The Angels

Truth hung in a void of fuzzy gray. Bursts of color and noise break in and fade away without cause or sense. It was a void so total, his mind was inventing stimuli. He didn’t know how long he was there. “Forever” and “For the smallest unit of time possible” seemed equally likely. Truth hung in a void so total, he wasn’t even aware of how long he hung here. And then there was an angel.

The angel’s size was impossible to define- nothing to compare it to. Truth had no idea if it was close by or far away. It felt big. Like a ...

Vol. 3 Chap. 63 A Righteous Cause

Truth didn’t look back a second longer. He knew what was behind him. All that mattered was forward. Or more to the point, away. There was enough magical force coming his way to level a small country. Give them a few minutes for the equipment to catch up, and it would be a large country. If they caught him, he wouldn’t have the luxury of death.

He was already running flat out. He tried to go faster. He didn’t dare use Abner’s Amble, not a single extra scrap of energy beyond what was needed to hide. His body could move f...

Vol. 3 Chap. 62 The Rubble of a Dream

The few survivors were shattered, exhausted. Confused. Hurting. Their energy had been spent to the last drop, keeping themselves alive any way they could. They were very smart, possessed of abundant magical power, and surrounded by the best talismans and personal protections money could buy on this planet. Empowered by a System that gave them access to a bewildering number of spells in an instant. For most of the people on the sky lily, it hadn’t been nearly enough to survive the explosive collapse. For those lucky, smart, strong few that ...

Vol. 3 Chap. 61 Cut Flowers

The floating sky-lily was tilting over. Systems were exploding now or activating without reason. Mindlessly running. The defenses raked the village, shattering homes, shattering the streets. Shattering lives. Truth looked carefully, but it seemed the heavy needles weren’t coming anywhere near him. Small mercies.

Some people on the flower were trying to evacuate, but for some reason, the clouds of butterflies weren’t coming together like they should. They were just… swarms of insects with no notable load-bearing capability. The fl...

Vol. 3 Chap. 60 Catharsis

The dim twilight was no hindrance to Truth- he watched the needle fly towards the wards through the magnifier. It hit the ward… and went straight through. He lost track of it there, but he didn’t see anything bouncing off the flesh of the flower. He bounced out of his spot as soon as the needle vanished, this time running three kilometers away before going to ground. He waited, watching, holding his breath. Every nerve strained.

The trees rustled. Were the birds coming? Or was it the wind? The cries of animals, the chirping insects...

Vol. 3 Chap. 59 Whatever The Boss Says It Is

Truth sat in Borges’ living room. The deadly coin was safely trapped under one of the doctor’s slippers, waiting to be scooped up and returned to the shelf. He needed a moment. It was all kind of a lot. He was gently steaming just sitting there. Sooner or later, the alarm spells would start getting cranky. Probably “sooner,” but he still needed a minute. Just to pull himself together.

He had experienced flashes of unreality before. That sense that reality was a soap bubble, a thin film of being, and humans, Truth in particular,...

Vol. 3 Chap. 58 Homemaker

Truth felt the security systems brush past him, like walking through cobwebs. Knowing that somewhere in them, spiders still hunted. His work cracking the system, his own spells, and the seeming “invitation in” by the lady of the house was enough to get them to look the other way. For now.

Borges' house was curiously decorated. Superficially, it was the same suburban blandeur- imposing sofas in grays and browns, a big scry ball, what was clearly intended to be his recliner, with a sparkling clean ashtray next to a table lig...

Art Contest!

So, in case you haven't heard, somehow- Slumrat Rising Vol. 1 is getting released Nov. 7 on Amazon Kindle, KU and Audible. I know, I have been very secretive about this fact, and I apologize. Paperbacks are already avaiable and have been reaching people. I test purchased my own copy, just to make sure everything was working as it was supposed to. You will be shocked to learn that Amazon is, in fact, very good at selling and delivering books to people. I think they have done it at least tiwice in the past. So I want to do something to celebra...

Vol. 3 Chap. 57 Happy Wife, Happy Life

Truth got up a little before dawn and made his way back towards the village. The information he got from Merkovah had listed Doctor Borges’ address and included pictures of the house. Truth thought he would start his hunt there. Not because he expected to catch Borges at home. He was never going to be that lucky. His hope was more pedestrian- that Borges would fail to practice impeccable security hygiene, and he would take some of his work home. Something that would give him a lead on where on the research campus he was actually located. 2023-10-30 16:01:00 +0000 UTC View Post

Vol. 3 Chap. 56 Nose Against The Window

Truth knew that it was dangerous to make assumptions without enough information. Paranoid speculation, however, was different. He would explain how, but some bastard would take advantage. Right now, he had the horrible suspicion that the “good doctor” and his team at Happori Village were trying to minutely alter the rules of reality, creating a zone of complete control. Not straying too far from the established order. Just pushing. Slightly.

Two immediate possible interpretations leapt to mind- one, they wanted to alter local reali...

Run Up To Launch on Nov. 7 = Good News For Patrons

Let's jump right into it- I'm increasing the chapters-ahead benefit for every tier by five. Prices are the same, release schedule will be the same. You are just getting more. Thats it. No games, gimmicks or goofs. Just... five more chapters. Which means that the Awakened are reading 20 chapters ahead for $5, and Barefoot Prophets are reading a whopping THIRTY chapters ahead for $10. So for the rest of the week, expect double releases. All I'm asking...