No predators nor parasites.
A longform work of fantasy xenofiction: the story of three nymphs with grand dreams caught in grander schemes. Updates intermittently; latest chapter posted 2023-01-31.
Important Note: this story is also hosted on my new site and Royalroad. I’m don’t plan to maintain this version of the text.
(This story shares a setting with other works in the Black Nerve canon, but none are required reading.)
- A Duskroot Exodus (01 · 02 · 03 · 04 · 05 · 06 · 07 · 08)
- An Eastward Pursuit (09 · 10 · 11 · 12 · 13 · 14 · 15 · 16 · 17 · 18)
- A Wisterun Welcome (19 · 20 · 21 · 22 · 23 · 24 · 25 · 26 · 27· 28)
- A Lakeside Investigation (
29)
The dream we share is simple: no traitors, no masters, only bugs united. Lucidity is a dreamer’s sacrifice to reality, and our sacrifice is the vesperbane. A vile transformation through blood and black nerve, the vespertine arts grant a mantis power and control beyond this world. Only vesperbanes can give our grand dreams breath — but all vesperbanes are shadowed by an incorrigible potential to instead become oppressors and defectors.
Awelah would be a vesperbane, just like her mother and grandmother before her. To make them proud, to wield power fit to inherit the family name. When the village that was her world, the hidden stronghold of Duskroot, is devoured by flame, she has a new purpose: destroy the one who took everything from her. They call her the One-Winged Phoenix, with the power to animate fire and walk through it, without being burnt, without crossing intervening distance. The One-Winged Phoenix destroyed everything, and Awelah must know why, and she must learn: how do you kill a phoenix?
Ooliri would be a vesperbane, just like his brother. Their father, a vesperbane scholar researching brains and aging, died with the word of a new breakthrough poised to be scrawled in his notebook. A monumental coincidence, or an assassination — and that he was a vesperbane speaks to where the probabilities lie. When their mother fell gravely ill, an unfinished technique derived from father’s research was the only hope to preserve her. Two children, only one of them a vesperbane, cannot yet replicate their father’s genius. They must seek out father’s last correspondent, a surgeon living in Dustroot. Ooliri must complete the technique, and prove: can you halt death in its tracks, bring the lost back to life?
Makuja would be a vesperbane, just like her savior needs. Without her family, or ambitions of her own to fight for, she has only loyalty to one who gave her life purpose. When mercenaries are sent to stalk the land, their orders to kill every living thing that crawls free, Makuja’s choice could determine their victory or defeat. Left with only leads and broken oaths, Makuja must learn what brought them to Duskroot and where she must go next — to know why, and learn: can you ever find an answer that satisfies, a reason that’s good enough?
United, these three share one thing: a chimerical hope, ambitions impossible. What sacrifice could grant them?
Snuggly Serials 