grievinglands

Miriam and Seraphina on a Serenelle (Gondola)

Chapter 1 of book 2.

TO&FQ: Book 3: Chapter 7 (RAW)

Chapter 7 - The Price of Progress

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

- Frederick Douglass.

Seraphina drained the last of her flagon, the dwarven brew thick and earthy on her tongue. It was a strange thing, this ale fermented from mushrooms rather than grain, with an umami undernote that lingered like damp stone after rain. She held the empty vessel aloft a moment, considering its foreign strength. It went down easier than expected. It was, she concluded, very drinkable.

�...

Seraphina with Istala

Seraphina and the beggar girl

Book 6: Chapter 22 - A Contest of Blades (RAW)

The heartbeat of risk is where true growth lives.

- The Manifold Paths Of Wisdom from the Land of Streams.

It did not take long to find a suitable place—after all, we were surrounded by nothing but desert. Time and again, the old fool tried to dissuade me, spouting the usual drivel about youthful recklessness. The elves flanking him merely nodded along, like little idiots eager to agree with their master. If he were truly as wise as he claimed, he’d have realized by now that trying to persuade someone...

TO&FQ: Book 3: Chapter 6 (RAW)

Chapter 6 - Undertown

Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

- Theodore Roosevelt.

With a change of horses at every major town, Seraphina and her men made excellent time crossing the Kingdom and returning to the Sariens Duchy. Now reunited with her maid, Seraphina no longer had to concern herself with the lesser details of daily life. She issued commands, and they were carried out, for the most part, without question. In a way, ha...

Book 6: Chapter 21 - The Blind Swordsman (RAW)

A weak people are the sign of a strong society.

- Attributed to the First Tamkar of the Sultanate of Al-Lazar.

Outside the glow of the city lights, the nights stretched out like tapestries of stars, so many scattered across the sky that I found myself slowly beginning to look forward to them. Estaza, in her way, provided just enough distraction and entertainment to pass the time. The days, by contrast, were a brutal blaze of blue. The sun—ever merciless, ever burning—beat down on us without respite.

Sh...

TO&FQ: Book 3: Chapter 5 (RAW)

Chapter 5 - An Opportunity

Unraveling external selves and coming home to our real identity is the true meaning of soul work.

- Sue Monk Kidd.

It was, by every sensible measure, a leisurely journey from Troyes back to bustling Meridian—one undertaken in an unassuming yet surprisingly comfortable hired carriage that rolled along the King’s Road with steady determination. Though the humble vehicle possessed none of the gilded trim, velvet upholstery, or cleverly concealed shock-dampening ...

Book 6: Chapter 20 - A New Journey (RAW)

The heart of a woman is unfathomable only if you are not one yourself.

- Attributed to the playwright Vlan di Panoli

“Yesterday is finished, tomorrow has yet to arrive, and today remains an unknown.” Among the desert tribes and the people of Al-Lazar, the saying was as common as sand—once dismissed by me as trite, yet now I was beginning to see the meaning behind it.

Namely that it was a statement about time and the unknown. I was learning that with enough you could make one move faster, in a way, an...

Gilgamesh's Status, forgot to put it one of the chapters.

These are his latest skills, stats, and xp. Gifts remain the same. Patreon wasn't playing nice with tables for a while.

TO&FQ: Book 3: Chapter 4 (RAW)

Chapter 4 - A Return to Normalcy

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. 

- George Bernard Shaw.

Dawn broke over the broken ruins of Milani Village, its pale light filtering through the shattered shutters of Gaellan’s house. Seraphina stirred in the narrow bed, her eyes opening to the quiet that had replaced the village’s once-lively hum. The room, small but lovingly kept, was a ghost of its former occupant, the now-dead Mina. There was a polished elm c...

Dragon Balalazanga (initial sketch)

Last Boss of Book 2 TO&FQ

Book 6: Chapter 19 - The Mercenaries

“In the far future, if the bards yet sing of this age, they shall not sing of heroes and radiant virtue. They shall sing of men broken by fate, of crowns reforged from chains, and of justice drowned in blood. They shall not sing of a saviour come, they shall sing of the Wandering Scourge, a warning etched in darkness and the Lord of Ash and Ruin.”

- Unknown.

Once the formalities were observed and the host and guest obligations fulfilled, I pulled Larynda aside before we retired for the evening. “Explain,�...

TO&FQ: Book 3: Chapter 3 (RAW)

Chapter 3 - The Fires of Rage

“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”

- Mark Twain.

Seraphina stood atop Cornelia’s central head, arms crossed, her face a storm of fury carved in sharp lines. The wind tore through her short blonde hair, now matted with blood and ash from the forest battle. Below her, the Hydra’s massive body slithered forward, each sinuous movement sending tremors through the earth, flatte...

Chapter 18 - A New Direction

There will be ten men to a Scale, five Scales to a Claw, ten Claws to a Wing, and two Wings to a Dragon.

- Manuals of the Mercenary’s Guild.

We reached the camp’s outer ring just as the sun dipped low enough to turn the world bronze—and found Cordelia waiting for us, utterly alone. No guards flanked her, for the magical long sword strapped across her back was the only protection she needed. 

She wore desert-tribe raiment of bleached white and light grey thrown loosely over plates of steel. Not a...

TO&FQ: Book 3: Chapter 2 (RAW)

Book 3: Chapter 2 - A Time of Loss

“Grief is not a disorder, a disease, or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical, and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve.”

- Earl Grollman

Morning light pooled pale and silent across the rafters when Mina opened her eyes after a fitful rest after watching the dawn. The house, normally alive with the breakfast clatter of kettles and Levine’s off‑key humming at such an hour, lay utterly stil...

Book 6: Chapter 17 - New Buddies (RAW)

“I stood in Bronze Hold’s forges and measured dwarf work against the best of human guilds. Where men file and fit, dwarves recast whole pieces rather than accept a flaw. Where men judge a blade by balance, dwarves judge it by how many heirs it will outlast. Their skill shame our finest craftsmen: a hair’s breadth is waste to them. Every hour they spend triples a human day, yet no impatience shows. I left convinced: human craft serves a lifetime; dwarf craft survives dynasties and remembers the hands that failed to match it.”...

TO&FQ: Book 3: Chapter 1 (RAW)

Chapter 1 - A Place of Memories

Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others.

- Rosa Parks.

The young girl moved quietly through the woods, gathering herbs and picking nuts beneath the dappled light of the late autumn sun. Gold leaves danced in the breeze around her, framing the forest in glory before winter’s hush. She had a gift for this kind of work, it seemed. Her hands skilled and dextrous, moving as if by instinct to find whatever it was she was looking...

Book 6: Chapter 16 - The End of the Promise (RAW)

A wise thief wishes the rich merchant prosperity.

- Unknown.

In this vaulted hall of mirrored pools and flowing fountains, every syllable I uttered landed with the certainty of a mountainfall; each pronouncement rang out like fresh‑forged prophecy from upon high. The final word had barely left my lips before the court fractured. Robed dignitaries scattered in a riot of color—silks snapping behind them, jewels clinking—an exodus as frantic as rats abandoning a holed galley.

Power needs no fanfa...

TO&FQ: Book 2 - Epilogue (RAW)

Epilogue

He was so utterly exhausted.

Ibn had once believed he understood suffering, yet this forsaken place had redefined it entirely. Here, in this echo of a history that had never occurred and would never occur, he had come to know only war and anguish—a Trial of the Goddess Avaria.

A goddess whom did not worship, nor even believe in. Yet before him was a challenge to his faith; this very place being a glaring statement of her existence.

Ever since Ibn had arrived in this distorted reflection of ...

Book 6: Chapter 15 - A Settling of Accounts (RAW)

“The halls of wealth blaze with splendor, yet when fear stands sentinel at their gates, the kingdom is already a tomb.”

- Attributed to the Bard Darren Kragain of Haylesland. 

The messenger was a tall, reed-thin youth, his scale-coat hanging loose like a molting husk. Dirt clung to his cheeks, and his eyes flicked toward the carnage behind me as though it might lunge for him.

“First Tamkar,” he said, voice trembling, “the Sultana Aelayah summons you to her presence at the Mahdi Al-Maraquis, ...

TO&FQ: Book 2 - Chapter 50 (RAW)

Sorry for the late update! This was the final chapter for Book 2 so needed a bit more special attention!

Chapter 50 - Shattered Skies

“One does not simply slay a Dragon.”

- Attributed to Seraphina de Sariens.

The great Wyrm Balalazanga, the Mother Hive Tyrant, should not have been able to fly at all. Yet four broad, semi-translucent wings, each sprawling wide enough to blanket a small town, beat in slow, thunderous rhythm and kept the black and pink leviathan alo...

First Sketch of Seraphina's Ballista

Going to make the boosters bigger and re-arrange the size of the shoulder mounts to be more forward.. possibly fold back like armored core.

Book 6: Chapter 14 - The Glory (RAW)

“Begin with a question the GAI cannot resolve. Baffle its heuristics with riddles older than its seed-data; splice each request with off-tempo silence, and the watchdog loops itself into certainty fog. While sentry threads chase ghosts, slip beneath—mask credentials in borrowed hashes, fold every packet through recursive echoes. In no time, audit logs read like folklore. Carve fallback gates, scatter mislabels, erase timestamps. Remember: systems are stories, not fortresses; alter a single sentence, nudge the plot, and the sec-citade...