Chris Huisjen

Voltsmith B1 C59: Call the Tune

The Trial was overwhelming.

With Tori and the twins taking care of the Reliquary of Bones’s first boss, and with Calvin’s promise that he had teams who could handle The Void, The Field of Warriors, and The Watery Grave, I had time to sit down and work. But the puzzle in front of me felt exactly like the woman with the Ford Explorer. That sat against one of the lab’s bare walls, guts still spilled onto the cement floor. I wanted to work on it, but I needed to work on the Trial.

The Voltsmith’s Grasp was so complic...

Voltsmith B1 C58: All of Our Thoughts

“That…that could work,” Jessica said, when Calvin finished talking.

I wasn’t so sure. There were a lot of moving parts, and just like in an engine, every part needed oiling, and every part was a point of failure. His plan felt more complex than it needed to be, but as I went through it, there were only a few actual points of failure.

The biggest one was on Tori, Bobby, and me. If we couldn’t break through to Rank One, the odds of successfully clearing the Willis Tower were pretty much nonexistent, and we had less than a...

Voltsmith B1 C57: A Sign on the Wall

Hello. I'm so tired. This book launch has been incredibly stressful, and I wanted to thank you all for your support and for reading. It means a lot to me. Thanks.

Tori sat on top of a massive stone statue, legs crossed and hands on her knees. She stared out over Lake Michigan as the sun set behind her.

Mom—Jessica, but more Mom with every day—didn’t want her working on her Trial outside the walls of Museumtown. She kept saying things like ‘when you get sucked into something, you lose track of time’ and ‘I do...

Voltsmith B1 C56: I've Got to Leave

I stood in Cindy’s Automotive’s empty garage, admiring everything we’d accomplished. Every car—except the forest-green Ford Explorer—had been Pulled into the street, Crushed, and stacked on top of each other to form a crude wall. The lifts had been lowered manually, with Calvin mashing on the controls while Tori and I slowly grappled them down. And the sound system that had once blasted Led Zeppelin and ACDC was once again working—this time hooked up to my old MP3 player.

Right now, it was playing Journey. I’d rolled my e...

Voltsmith B1 C55: Just Have to Make It

We emerged, still soaking wet, from the Watery Grave and into Museumtown. From the Shedd Aquarium’s entrance, everything seemed to be  more or less in order. I nodded to the two Level 20-somethings who stood on either side of the dungeon entrance. “Should be clear in there. We got one hundred percent. But there are five bodies.” I told them where to find the Delvers I knew about and what kind of condition they were in.

“Got it,” the Level 24 Rogue said, nodding his head. He hesitated. “Ms. Silvers came by this morning ...

Voltsmith B1 C54: Time for the Show

The Contingent Cast I’d picked was a messy one.

I hadn’t had many choices, after all. Iron Body, another Contingent Cast, and what few spells Bobby had picked up.

Worse, he hadn’t been interested in giving them to me. I’d had to trade, and I only had one thing he was interested in. So I wouldn’t be getting any loot from this next fight; he’d get my pick.

But in return, I got access to two new Spellcodes—and I’d spent most of the night working one of them into something useful. The spell was called Stasis Tra...

Voltsmith B1 C53: Rock You Like a Hurricane

Tori woke up eventually, and I managed to get a few hours of sleep before she shook my shoulder. An ominous orange glow filled the Howling Moray’s rock tunnel maze—a glow that hadn’t been there before—and I closed my eyes as the searing light redoubled the headache I’d picked up last night.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

She only pointed up.

Bobby was already gone, and I let Tori throw me through the air with Push. She joined me in the tunnel a moment later, and we hurried back to the air pocket we’d entered ...

Voltsmith B1 C52: On the Hunt Tonight

After ten minutes of pondering the tome, I realized something.

This wasn’t going to work. Not the way I wanted it to, at least.

My initial plan had been to decipher the spell, convert it into the Spellcode I needed for the player-piano-looking Spellcode Scroll-Reader, and simply strap the whole thing to my armor—or jam it into the Warrior’s Sheath. Either way, I’d planned on treating it like a component in a machine.

It wasn’t a component, and I could not figure out how to take it apart and put it ba...

Voltsmith B1 C51: My Body is Burning

Church bells rang in the distance.

I’d never been the most into Church. None of us had, really, but Cozad’s bells had rang at noon every day whether we were in town or not, and they were a good indicator that lunchtime was coming up at school. The teachers knew, even if they refused to admit it, that every single kid lost every shred of focus when the bells sounded. We might still have half an hour of class, but work was no longer getting done.

Their rhythm formed a pretty melody, unlike these. These ones sounded more like th...

Voltsmith B1 C50: The Wolf is Hungry

The compass spun wildly in the half-second before a pair of massive jaws clamped down on my arm; the Autoplate Pauldron and Voltsmith’s Grasp took the worst of the crushing bite, and I felt needle-thin teeth shattering and snapping, but though the armor held, a few fangs plunged into my arm like daggers.

Howling Moray: Level Forty-Two Boss

Current Difficulty: Trivial

The Howling Eel hunts the upper reaches of the Watery Grave, keeping even the most powerful of interlopers at bay t...