Stargazer Chapter Seven: Beneath the Whisperwind

A chill, damp breath of air, smelling faintly of loam and distant ore, snaked its way past Elara’s ear, raising gooseflesh along her arms. The pre-dawn gloom still clung to the peaks of the Shadow-Clefts, rendering the familiar crags into looming, indistinct giants. She pulled her cloak tighter, the coarse wool doing little to ward off the insidious cold that seemed to seep into her very bones. The parchment, now crumpled and soft from being clutched in her hand, felt like a burning ember against her palm, a dangerous invitation to an unknown world.

Stargazer Chapter Six: The Collective's Summons

The rough-hewn stone, still damp from the morning’s mist, dug into Kael’s shoulder, a familiar ache that had become as much a part of him as his own breath. He shifted the heavy block, the coarse grit rasping against his tunic, and added it to the growing pile near the base of the Obsidian Spire. His gaze, however, was not on the tower’s relentless ascent, but on the distant, shimmering expanse of the Veridia plains, where the horizon bled into an indistinct haze. He’d been watching for Elara since first light, a knot of apprehension tightening in his gut with every passing moment she remained unseen.

Stargazer Chapter Five: Echoes in Stone

The air in the Shadow-Clefts tasted different, not merely thinner as Mara had warned, but laced with a metallic tang, like old blood on a winter wind. Elara shivered, pulling her threadbare cloak tighter around her shoulders, the fabric offering scant defence against the pre-dawn chill. Her journey had been arduous, a relentless climb over treacherous scree and along narrow ledges, each step a gamble against the abyss. The mist, thick as a shroud, clung to the jagged rock formations, twisting them into monstrous, ephemeral shapes that seemed to watch her with unseen eyes.

Stargazer Chapter Four: The Overseer's Gaze

There was no clean way out of this, Kael realised, watching the distant figure. No easy path back to the numb acceptance that had been his constant companion since the Stargazer’s chains had first bitten into his wrists.

Stargazer Chapter Three: Whispers of the Clefts

“We cannot simply sit here and wait to die!” Elara's voice, though barely a whisper, carried a fierce edge, cutting through the stunned silence that had settled over her clan. The sun, already high, beat down mercilessly on the Veridia plains encampment, baking the dust into a fine, choking powder. The memory of the Taskmaster's decree, the impossible quota, still hummed in the air like a venomous insect.

Stargazer Chapter Two: An Impossible Edict

Elara pushed herself upright, the rough weave of the sleeping mat scraping against her skin, a faint ember of last night’s fierce resolve still warm within her chest. The tent, usually filled with the rustling and murmuring of her family at this hour, was unnervingly quiet. Her younger sister, Lyra, lay curled in a tight ball beside her, still lost to sleep, her breath a soft, even puff against the chill morning air.

Stargazer Chapter One: The Shadow Over Veridia

The acrid tang of sweat and damp earth clung to Elara's tunic, a familiar perfume of ceaseless labour. It mingled with the sharp, metallic scent of newly quarried stone, a smell that had become as much a part of her as her own breath. The air, thick with dust motes dancing in the merciless afternoon sun, rasped in her throat with every shallow gasp. Her hands, rough and calloused as ancient bark, throbbed with a persistent ache that had long since transcended mere pain, settling into a dull, inescapable companion.

Social Media Discoveries 84: Lilith Czar, Tulip, Broken Peach, ScreaMachine and More!

It's the first week of November, and we've reached episode 84 of the Social Media Discoveries series! Have you been keeping up with us? Probably not knowing you lot.

My Birthday Fundraiser for Cancer Research UK

For my birthday this year I'm creating this fundraiser for Cancer Research UK. I've chosen them for two reasons, my brother Jon's passing from cancer in January, and because this year is the 100th anniversary of my Father's birth, Dad having also passed away from cancer back in 1991.

 

If you could donate a few pennies I'd be very grateful. The fund raiser closes on Sunday, November 15th.

 

You can donate via Facebook by tapping or clicking here! 

 

Thanks in advance.

Rest in Peace Sir Patrick

It was way back in the 1980’s, long before streaming, when a trip to the local video rental shop brought you all kinds of surprises. Back then when you rented a film the tapes always featured trailers for other videos you might want to rent, as was the case when I discovered that there was going to be a new Star Trek, not a film starring the old crew, but a brand spanking new television series, the first time there had been a new Trek series since the old animated series back in the 1970’s.

The trailer was for the pilot film of ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’, set some eighty years or so after the films, which were still going strongly at that point. They featured a whole new crew, and I remember sitting there watching this trailer in wonder. They had an android, a blind guy, a lady doctor, and we were now best buddies with the Klingons.

Oh, and new captain of this grand new U.S.S. Enterprise was played by an Englishman, a man from Yorkshire no less.

Social Media Discoveries 83: Mark Mothersbaugh, Kevin Grim, The Hara, Boris Harizanov and More!

We've reached episode 83 of Social Media Discoveries? How? I don't know. Hopefully someone is listening to this stuff!

Anglo-Force: Saltwater Grudge Epilogue

The café in Covent Garden was too warm and too loud, and the coffee had gone cold twenty minutes ago. James sat with his back to the wall, a newspaper spread across the small marble table, and let the noise wash over him without quite hearing it. Three months since Cromer, and London still felt like a city he was visiting rather than one he had ever lived in.

Anglo-Force: Saltwater Grudge Chapter Fourteen: New Horizons

The morning had rinsed the sky to a pale, watercolour blue, the kind of light that made the North Sea look almost benign. James stood at the rail of what remained of Cromer Pier, the planking beneath his boots still dark with last night's wet, and watched a fishing boat chug out past the end of the structure. The storm had taken the Pavilion's roof and most of its eastern wall; the amusement arcade was a shell of buckled timber and shattered glass. Workmen in high-visibility jackets were already stringing orange tape along the landward ramp, their voices carrying across the water in flat, unhurried Norfolk vowels.

Anglo-Force: Saltwater Grudge Chapter Thirteen: The Reckoning Tide

The jetty was coming apart under their feet.

            James felt the planks shift, a deep splintering groan that travelled up through his legs and into the small of his back. He braced himself against a piling, one arm hooked around the slick timber, the other clutching the ledger to his chest. The leather was saturated, black with seawater, and it had begun to smell of something ancient and sour. Siobhan crouched three feet away, her fingers dug into a cleat bolted to the decking. Leo was behind her, one hand on her shoulder, the other gripping a length of broken railing he had pulled from the wreckage.

Anglo-Force: Saltwater Grudge Chapter Twelve: The Pier’s Last Stand

The wind hit them the moment they stepped off the pier's landward end and onto the planking proper, a solid wall of driven salt that made Siobhan stagger and clutch the rail. James kept his head down, the ledger jammed inside his coat and pressed against his ribs with an arm that had long since gone numb.

Anglo-Force: Saltwater Grudge Chapter Eleven: A Storm’s Fury

The pier gave no shelter from what was coming in off the North Sea.

            James reached the landward end with his coat plastered to his back and his right hand pressed flat against the railing for balance. The blow to his skull had left him with a dull, insistent throb that sharpened every time he turned his head too quickly, and the three miles from the manor had been covered in a haze of hedgerows and ditches and the occasional pair of headlights that sent him flat into the wet grass until they passed. He had no clear memory of getting out of the cellar. The chain had given at the bracket, not at his wrist, and the iron ring still hung from the raw skin like a bracelet he could not remove. The rest was fragments: a door that had not been locked, a stretch of gravel he had crossed on hands and knees, the salt marsh beyond the garden wall where he had lain for what felt like an hour while the storm gathered itself overhead.

Anglo-Force: Saltwater Grudge Chapter Ten: The Tidal Cellar’s Secret

The cold came first. Not the shallow chill of an unwarmed room, but the deep, settled cold of stone that had never known sunlight. It pressed through James's shirt and into the skin beneath, and with it came the awareness of his own body, the catalogue of damage: the ache at the back of his skull where the blow had landed, the raw burn around his wrists, the cramp locked into his shoulders from the angle of his arms.

Anglo-Force: Saltwater Grudge Chapter Nine: Captured by the Tide

The van’s headlights swept across the lighthouse compound and caught the black saloon already parked at an angle across the gravel, its doors swinging open before Leo had cut the engine.

Anglo-Force: Saltwater Grudge Chapter Eight: The Lighthouse Vault

He drove through the small hours with the window cracked an inch, the cold air keeping the exhaustion at bay. The coast road unspooled in the headlamps, empty and black, and the sea was a presence off to his left that he could not see but could feel in the pressure of the wind against the car's flank. He had not slept. He had tried, in the flat above the office, lying on the sofa with his coat still on and the microfilm cylinder on the table beside him, but every time he closed his eyes the gala reassembled itself behind the lids. Arthur Vane's voice, low and assured, naming facts about James's life that no stranger should possess. The black saloon idling at the kerb, it's engine a patient rumble. The coordinates burning in his head like a fever.

Anglo-Force: Saltwater Grudge Chapter Seven: A Gala of Shadows

The Grand Hotel stood on the cliff road like a wedding cake left out in the rain, it's white stucco façade lit by floodlamps that turned the February damp into a haze of suspended droplets. James paused at the bottom of the steps, one hand resting on the cold iron railing, and let the ache at the back of his skull settle into something he could manage. The wound beneath his hair had stopped seeping sometime that afternoon, but the skin around it felt tight and hot, and the lights from the hotel's entrance seemed to pulse in time with his heartbeat.