ValentineDavis21

Even while bruised and red-eyed from lack of sleep, Kaufman still looked good in a suit. Regal and poised with his hair combed back. Two dozen faces watched him from around the room. Most of them were silent. Attentive. Maybe more than a little nervous. Not everyone was being quiet. Not everyone was paying attention. Bazzelthorpe had to grind his teeth together to keep from glaring over his shoulder at the two idiots behind him. The bosswoman stood in the corner of the room, seemingly unawa

In the back of his mind Vanus knew the stairs he found himself climbing down were not the same stairs he'd used to descend into Inferno. It didn't stop his blood pressure from peaking or his chest from drawing tight. So he took them one step at a time, forcing himself to breathe, taking comfort in the fact he wasn't alone. Bazzelthorpe and Vanus turned the corner into a large square room that had been set up like a lounge. The walls glowed with an ambient red light. A woman stood on a

"Lionel," the man in his dreams called him. "Lionel…the time for us to speak has come." Vanus tried to speak but he couldn't because his mouth was made of smoke. They say at a round table in the middle of the Void: a table that floated in the middle of oblivion with nothing solid beneath its legs to keep it standing; but the mundane rules of physics did not apply to the endless dark. Just as much as it was a place of nothing, anything and everything was possible. The man smiled

It's not generational necessarily. Little Annie doesn't really have much to do with the story at this point (and is not meant to).

White coats circuited the Anderson house beneath a sky that was as black and moonless as the Void. The excited barking of dogs and shouts of the search team combing the woods sounded from the woods. The flash of the strobe lights atop the Roc City Police cruisers splashed everything in neon red and blue. For Bazzel looking into them was like having hot needles shoved into his eyes, but he didn't want to leave Kaufman. Not even for a second. The death magician faced the woods, his expressio

No monsters dwelled in the tunnel, only fetid darkness, and cobwebs, and the feeling that everything was closing in on them. Vanus would have taken the monsters over the fear of being trapped in a place where he would never see the light of day again. Bazzel had insisted on taking point and now led the way with his weapon out. He walked stolidly, his shoulders set in determination, but Vanus had worked with him long enough to recognize the airs he was trying to put on: his tail remained cu

Basically, it's subterfuge: deceit used in order to achieve one's goal.

Yes, remember the conversation Vanus had with Bazzelthorpe at the ice cream shop, when he said how manipulative the forces of Inferno can be? Well there you go. It's someone else using Chokmah's lighter to create trouble. You will find out who in Chapter 31.

Yes, remember the conversation Vanus had with Bazzelthorpe at the ice cream shop, when he said how manipulative the forces of Inferno can be? Well there you go. It's someone else using Chokmah's lighter to create trouble? You will find out who in Chapter 31.

The moment Vanus saw Brad and Heidi Anderson's house, his insides went cold. His reaction to the air around the house affected the air inside the truck. Bazzelthorpe, normally the one to crack the window in Mid-November, look over at him with concern. "Please, dear sweet Mother," Vanus muttered under his breath. "Not today." "Kaufman?" "Do you see this?" The death magician tapped a fingernail against the window, indicating the two story house at the edge of the cul-

Bazzelthorpe was in the middle of pouring his third cup of coffee for the morning when a scream made his spine straighten up so hard that coffee spilled over the edge of the cup; this started a chain reaction of events that led only to imminent disaster. Almost at the same moment he turned to face the direction of where the sound was coming from, the scalding hot liquid burned the Astorathian’s flesh. The cup tumbled from his hand, before spreading out in a black puddle that went in all directio

Bazzel's head felt like a revolving door. Or maybe it was more like those wheels from the game shows that humans went crazy over. The one where they leapt about and smothered each other with kisses and hugs when the lights went off. Only instead of multiple options there was only one prize to go home with: Vanus. Vanus. And Vanus. Each and every second with the death magician brought a sense of new discovery. A sense of insight that made Bazzelthorpe breathless with a maddening anticip

Carlos was standing outside his door when Vanus arrived. “We need to talk, Van,” he said with that pinched, hard-eyed look that said he would not be denied. “Carlos, now is really not the time. I’ve had a shit week…” “I don’t care how shitty your week has been. The last couple of years have been pretty shitty. Full of mixed messages and secrets. Well today I want answers and I won’t leave until I get them.” “Fine,” the death magician grumbled. He nudged past Carlos to get to the d

What's happening? Vanus thought. This isn't happening. This shouldn't be happening. But it was happening and he didn't want it to stop. Or at least his body didn't. Bazzelthorpe's vibrated and purred around him like the engine of the sweetest ride. His lips covered Van's completely, warm and soft and very full. One hand could wrap completely around Van's skull if that's what he wanted to do, but instead the callused, scar-bitten tips of his fingers slid through the death magician's sho

"Are you okay?" They were back in the truck but Vanus was the one driving. Bazzel didn't answer - why have I started thinking of him as Bazzel all the sudden? he wondered. He kept his head facing the window, the lost hopeless look on his face reflected in the rain-speckled glass. Vanus felt his own nerves tighten, the words "Hello? Can you at least say something?" heavy and acidic on his tongue. You need to stay calm, he reminded himself. You're behind the wheel for the Good

Bazzel was awake when he should not be; Bazzelthorpe was alive when he should not be. And yet once more his body was not his own; once more his will, his life was not his own. White light seared his eyes, making him cry out. No he didn’t cry out, because he couldn’t. He couldn’t get his mouth to work properly. They’d pumped him full of drugs to keep him from moving just as they’d done to Siel. Soon they would cut into him with sharp instruments made of steel, slicing him open like a fish to

All the self-righteous fury and macho false bravado Bazzelthorpe had displayed in front of Kahlah whooshed out of him in a single gust of cold air. He heard the high-pitched mewling sound of fear again, but this time it was not Martice or Lexis making the sound - it was him. And he couldn’t make himself stop. During his first years on the surface, he recalled seeing a showing of the old black-and-white Frankenstein movie. While moviegoers laughed and howled and threw popcorn at the silly, o

It didn’t take long for Vanus to regret his entirely impulsive, not-at-all-thought-out plan to descend into the pits of hell; a hell. There were so many of them who could possibly keep them all straight? Unfortunately pride, the true downfall of man, would not allow him to make the long, winding journey back up to the surface. The problem was the steps: They were steep and uneven. Rather than climb down facing forward he had to take one excruciating step at a time with his back up against

“I’m here,” Vanus said in a voice thick with sleep and dreams and ghosts and who knew what else. “Right before it happened.” Bazzelthorpe sat with his back against the wall. Except for Vanus everything was completely silent. It was as if the building had lost complete interest in them for the time being. It’s probably just waiting, trying to draw us out, the Astorathian thought. “What do you see?” he asked just to distract himself from the slow passage of time. He could feel each second dra

I am currently on Chapter 25. So, I will throw out a few bones. I think these are relatively spoiler-free and they are just some ideas I am toying with. The point of the deities (particularly the ones mentioned in the videos) is that they feed off trauma and while they definitely use magic to influence the world, they use real-life events, real-life traumas to do that. Take someone like Brad, who at the start of the story was a normal guy, is now a killer. Secondly, recall when Vanus and Bazzelthorpe stopped at the ice cream shop after the morgue scene, Vanus explained briefly about the hierarchy of Inferno (the Void) which is truly vast. There is a reason why the Corebook is so huge. There's a whole freakin' cosmoverse for me to explore if I so choose, and right now I'm just exploring the Inferno section (one dimension, one pantheon or whatever). Thirdly, the next three or four chapters take a detour from the case and focus solely on Vanus and Bazzelthorpe. It will explore their trauma more. It is not pretty and quite horrific. For those who want to know what in the Void Bazzelthorpe saw in the camera, that is answered at the very end of Chapter 24. In the grand scheme of the story, it's not overly important, but it is a character development thing. I will try to keep posting regularly, but I also have another story I've been working on that I'm about 20 chapters into. Debating on when I should start posting that. I have 7-8 chapters in the backlog for this and am trying to keep it up, but am trying not to burn myself out on this one. That's why I have so many stories that I never finish, is because I don't pace myself. I have enjoyed writing this one so I want to make sure for the Good Mother's love that I finish it.

Pale moonlight cast pools of silver on the Wishwood ruins, giving everything a ghostly cast. During the day there had been humans everywhere, scuttling around like rats in search for scraps, but now that darkness had fallen no one was around. The silence reminded Bazzelthorpe of those long, endless days when Gael and he had snuck around the streets of Inferno (not unlike rats), afraid to draw the attention of something that wanted to eat them or torture and maim them in a terrible way. He tried

Vanus stood amidst the rubble and ruin that had once been the Wishwood Suites, breathing in the smell of ash. Is this what lung cancer smells like? he wondered. It was a dark thought from a man who found himself in an equally dark mood. The entire parking lot had been barricaded off to keep curious onlookers at bay. Cops waved at them in a lazy attempt to get them to move on. Tendrils of black smoke hung around the ruins like a wreath. The sky was grim, an overcast gray that only added to t

When Brad came home, Heidi was on the phone. She spoke in the low, hushed voice of someone who doesn’t want to be heard. She sat at the kitchen table, her back slightly hunched and turned away from him. Her head was bowed with defeat. She didn’t see him standing there with his back pressed up against the wall like a stalker. “I don’t know what to do,” she said into the phone, her voice on the verge of breaking. “We went to the hospital. The MRI checked out. I know he’s talked to a therapis

Dan, I don't know why but the Brad chapters are always so fun to write. I don't mean that as a compliment to myself, but I am having a lot of fun writing his descension. It's also hard to do it in a way that feels realistic and unrushed. A lot of this stuff is supposed to take span within a week or so. I'll have to figure all that out when I go back and edit. I have an ending mind but we are a long ways off. I'd say plotwise I just got finished with the setup phase as of Chapter 22.