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L&S Fables

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I'm Liv Savell, and here are some things I've written:

❖ Vassal (Call of Calamity Book I)
❖ Goddess (Call of Calamity Book II)
❖ Shepherd of Souls (Shepherd of Souls Book I)
❖ Death Seeker (Shepherd of Souls Book II)
❖ The Thistle Queen’s Thorns (Kindle Vella)
❖ The Last Contender (Song of the Lost Book I)
❖ Emissary to the Frost Wolf (Song of the Lost Book II) Available June 2024
❖ Title Announcement Pending (Song of the Lost Book III) Available Late 2024

❖ Co-Author: @Sterling ❖
❖ Website: lsfables.com ❖

Most Recent Posts

In The Sunday Group → 2 yrs ago Forum: Advanced Roleplay
“Too tangible, ha ha. I can’t touch anything, remember?”

Jaelle slipped from the red world and into the too-bright Louisiana sun. It was hot enough that the air above the asphalt road shimmered in the distance, though she couldn’t feel it, and those at the gas station were beaded with sweat from the few moments outside that it took to fill up their cars. Despite her sarcastic remark, Jaelle kept herself carefully invisible to mortal eyes—she was just too irritated with Mal to be nice about it.

“We’ve talked about this. Just because I’m tied to that damn staff doesn’t mean you can go haring off on whatever plan without telling me. I might have useful ideas! Insights! Opinions! I’m not a dog that you can pull around on an invisible leash.”

Mal was like a brother to Jaelle. He had saved her from the void of indeterminable years and helped her find a much more interesting existence with the Sunday Group. When he wasn’t trying to show off, he was funny and nice and fun to be around. But damn her fading remains if he wasn’t so self-absorbed that he forgot the people around him were intelligent beings as well.

The gas station was of the typical, back-roads sort. Two old pumps sat beneath a cover that looked to have been half-blown away by the last hurricane. A sizable corner was missing, the rough edge showing the frame and torn plastic. The car at the pump left with a fuller belly, leaving the lot empty except for two vehicles parked to the side. The windows advertised The Double Gulp for 89 cents around a big plastic cup spilling soda, and the over-stuffed cigarette disposal was surrounded by a halo of fallen smokes.

They stepped inside to the distorted jingle of an electronic bell, and three sets of eyes turned towards Mal. A middle-aged couple leaned against the far wall, exchanging anxious looks, and the decidedly unhappy store owner glared at Mal over her glasses, her curly hair pulled back in a tight, frizzy ponytail. “Welcome to 7-Eleven. Do you want gas or tobacco?”

Jaelle floated up a couple of inches to whisper in Mal’s ear. “I guess those are the Petersons— Primrose’s witnesses. I’ll go see if I can find where they keep the cameras.”

She sped off through a series of poorly-stocked shelves of cheap chips and candy. There was a shut door to one side of the garish Big Gulp machine, but she didn’t bother trying to see if it was locked. Jaelle just slid through, her body warming slightly with proximity to the mortal plane.

The hallway behind the door was disappointingly mundane. A bright yellow rolling mop bucket sat overturned in a square basin, its mop hanging above so that the discolored head dropped the occasional plop of murky water. Other cleaning supplies cluttered once-white shelves next to bulky wheels of toilet paper and paper towels. The door to an employees-only bathroom was open, showing stained tile, and crates of merchandise stacked against the walls in lopsided towers.

So much stuff. They’d never be able to take it with them if they left.

Just before the emergency exit on the far end, there was a second door. Jaelle went through into a closet stuffed with a desk stacked with old papers and an HP monitor showing the paused video of their victim’s car. She could see Mal and the witnesses in the live feed minimized in the bottom left corner, but none of the angles caught the edge of the crime scene down the street, and she could tell nothing about the victim’s car from the stilled image.

“Play!” she said, but nothing happened. “Google Assistant, play!”

Jaelle growled. The thing was too outdated for such useful features, and chances were they wouldn’t necessarily work with the program anyway if she’d been listening to Flint right. Hopefully, Mal would have more luck with the Petersons, or the others would find out something about the magic.
In The Sunday Group → 2 yrs ago Forum: Advanced Roleplay
Sweet! I'm going to wait to see what Primrose does, and then I'll reply.
In O R I F L A M M E → 2 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay


R E L O U S E




A F T E R M A T H


Osanna shoved through the city gate in a tide of bodies. Armored forms jostled her broken arm, elbowed her sides, and pushed her into other soldiers in their haste to answer the call. Many were wounded, and their screams tainted the night, the smell of blood and shit and vomit heavy in the air.

For a Black Rezaindian, death was usually a tidy thing. Osanna slipped open locked doors in the darkest hours, dealing in poison and quick-slit throats. She left bodies slumped over desks or in their cups or curled beneath a crimson blanket in their beds. The judgment of Echeran was swift but not cruel. By contrast, this war was filthy.

When she was finally through, Osanna stumbled through muddy streets until she found a wall to lean on, pressing her shoulders against cool stone, the squelch and slick of mud beneath her feet. Her hip throbbed with the trickle of blood she’d not been able to stem one-handed. Her collar and left arm ached unless they were jostled and then lit up with fiery pain. She needed care, needed to get to a mender.

The makeshift tents for the wounded smelled worse than the stampede of soldiers filtering through the gate. A miasma of pain and rot tainted the air like poison, and Osanna gagged as she was pushed into a cot. Time passed in strange leaps and jolts. The figure of a soft-faced boy in a giant’s armor swam beneath her eyelids, and the man in the cot nearest her died gasping, blood gurgling from his lips.

And then, the miasma began to lift. Two women moved through the tent, laying their hands on the ill. Osanna looked up into the eyes of a sharp-faced Yasoi lady, and her bones began to knit together.



M O R N I N G


“Osanna.”

Osanna opened her eyes to sun-lit canvas, the warmth of late morning heating Dame Sabine Dupont’s tent. The lady sat within arm’s reach, pulling a tunic down over pale skin and reaching up to tie back red hair. Osanna yawned and scrubbed at her face, trying to rub away the beginnings of a headache. Her mouth was parched.

“What are you doing that for?” Osanna couldn’t imagine that the Parrench army was leaving already. They needed time to recoup their losses and recover from their wounds, and there was the small matter of the Eskandr army outside the walls. She hooked a finger in the hem of Dame Sabine’s leggings, only to be swatted away.

“You need to dress too. The king has called for us both to meet him at the red table, though unfortunately not at the same time. It seems we’re needed for two different reprisals.”

“Whatever will I do without you around to sweep me off the battlefield?”

Sabine rolled her eyes. “I suggest you keep a better hold on your horse.”

Osanna groaned again and sank back into the bedroll. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance she made it back within the walls before they closed.”

“You might be surprised. Horses tend to return to the nearest source of food, and you lost her at the beginning of the battle. Now up, oh battler of Nashorns.”

“You still don’t believe me, then?”

“I’m starting to— begrudgingly. I overheard soldiers talking today about the little nun who took on the giant. Though you’re not that small. It’s still up in the air.”

“Hah hah.” Osanna pulled on her trousers and buttoned her sword belt over them. “I’ll show you little if you meet me on the sparring field.”

“I’d rather meet you back here if we don’t get shipped off today. Go, or you’ll be late."



T H E R E D T A B L E


Osanna met Arcel’s gaze as he looked briefly at her and glanced around the round table, her eyes lingering briefly on a pale girl with green hair and an older man in Rezaindian robes that she had not seen before. It wasn’t clear what his order was— Red, maybe? Unless he was here to care for the dead.

She listened to Arcel’s speech dutifully enough, but in the end, it did not matter much to her whether he sent her to steal into the Eskandr camps or to slip, wraith-like, through their halls. The archbishop had been clear—Osanna was to treat the king like a superior in the church, and it did not change much to have the order come from an abbot or a bishop or a monarch. It was the same job, and she’d always enjoyed doing it well.

Osanna sat back in her seat. “When do we start?”
In The Sunday Group → 2 yrs ago Forum: Advanced Roleplay
Jaelle hung in a red world.

From within, the bloodstone felt almost incomprehensibly vast, a hollow sphere of red stone, the edges of which blurred to indistinguishable blood-fog with distance. It was lit from outside so that she could only see the color now because of daylight. All those insufferable years in the dark of a tomb, she had seen nothing but black. It was silent now, though when the edges of the living world lay close to that of the dead, moans and voices slipped through.

The bloodstone was a necessity of Jaelle’s continued existence in the world unless she wanted to fade away, to lose her mind to the vast nothingness beyond. But that couldn’t keep her from hating it. Prison and lifeline in equal parts.

Time did not seem to pass quite the same while she hid within, so it was not long before the light around Jaelle changed—morning sun to a bright, phosphorescent glare. She relaxed. The cop that spoke to Eleanor at the crime scene made her more than a little uncomfortable, even invisible as she could be to mortal eyes. If she and Mal were inside somewhere, they had likely gotten away fine.

With a little bit of effort, Jaelle moved toward the edges of the bloodstone, the space of a few millimeters stretching ahead like miles. When she finally made it, she pressed her face to the inside of the stone, squinting at the fuzzy shapes of the world outside—sharp edges, bright lights, the softer forms of desk chairs.

The office?

Jaelle took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and imagined a door on the inside of the gem. It bloomed into existence, the same red hue as everything around it, but with a big, old-fashioned handle. Light leaked from the keyhole, white and green and promising entrance to the real world. She reached out and turned the handle. Leaving the bloodstone didn’t feel like much of anything, really—like stepping through an inanimate object. Then she was out, the world immeasurably brighter and full of color. It was a good thing she didn’t have physical eyes any longer, or the difference might have been uncomfortable.

She was in, of all places, Mal’s office. It was fine as far as offices went, she supposed. More carefully decorated than Mal’s house with impressive-looking magical objects and thick, dusty tombs lining the shelves. Disappointing. She had wanted to see something more interesting than Mal chanting to yet another rock in his collection.

“Mal, why are we here? Aren’t there like people to question? Clues to track down? Strange, hidden parts of New Orleans to uncover? I thought Primrose said something about witnesses at a gas station.”

Honestly, why he insisted on spending so much time at the same few places every day was beyond her. People these days were far too well-rooted. Never mind security! There was a whole world out there, and they could still touch it. Why waste that time in one place?

“What are you doing, anyway? Did the others come back too?”
In The Sunday Group → 2 yrs ago Forum: Advanced Roleplay
I'm having to take an unexpected flight home due to a family emergency. Jaelle can accompany Mal out of sight if need be. I'm sorry to do this to you guys, and I'm looking forward to writing with you more when I return.
In O R I F L A M M E → 2 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay


B A T T L E: T H E N A S H O R N


Interacting with The Nashorn @Force and Fury




East of the beach, Osanna found a measure of peace tucked under the protective edge of an overturned wagon. She took a long draw from her waterskin, letting go of the magic hiding her now that she had a physical barrier, and started to draw. There was plenty to draw from—the thunder of the waves, the clash of steel, even the grunting effort of bodies. Arcane was little aid with the sky so dark, but that would only prove to her advantage when Osanna needed to hide again.

She closed her eyes. Here, protected, the battle felt far off, just a roar of noise and movement in the background. In this relative still, she began to pray, her lips moving in silent words to the Death God, words meant for no mortal ears. In her supplication, she found respite from anger and frustration and rest for her body after the exertion of the battle so far.

There was much to be thankful for. Osanna was alive, unharmed, and now, once more filled with what power she could command. It was time to stop playing soldier and start acting like the assassin she had spent her life training to be. The shadows were both her best defense and her weapon of choice. Now, she would use them.

Osanna slipped out of her makeshift shelter and into the night, drawing her cloak around her armor and the hood over her head to hide the glints of metal and skin. She would need to be conservative with what magic she had. The rain-slick forms of bodies still thrashed in bloody effort to the west, but much closer, Osanna watched a beam of light brighten Sir Rodric’s face before hitting his opponent in the chest. The mountain of a man kept his feet, and Rodric, by contrast, looked shaken. Osanna moved in to lend him aid.

Osanna slipped in behind the brute while his back was turned, but some minuscule noise must have given away her approach and without the covering of shadows, he easily repelled her first blow. Deftly, she dropped back, disappearing from sight as a knight charged in from the other side. She reevaluated the opponent, watching closely as he deflected the knight's arrows and sent them flying back towards him. This was not going to be a simple encounter.

“Esheran, empower me,” she whispered, moving around her opponent under the cover of night and magic. With him reeling from Rodric’s attack, she pressed the advantage, raising her sword to pierce through the eye open behind the slit in his helm. She felt no remorse for the death of this man. He would go to Echeran, be judged and kept.

The blade went in, but not as deeply as Osanna had intended, and the Nashorn shoved her away, roaring as she danced back out of harm’s way. Before she could catch her breath, before she could call for the magic to hide her or put some distance between herself and this beast, he attacked. Osanna threw up her sword to block the mighty blow, but it wouldn’t be enough—couldn’t be enough. She closed her eyes, knowing calm in her core, but the blow never came.

When Osanna looked again, the Nashorn’s charge had ended in a black-crystal replica of her that shattered even as she watched, the fragments turning to smoke and then dissolving into so much air. Praise Echeran. She did not stop to taunt the Nashorn but let the night swallow her and danced away while he raged at the spot where she had once been.

Osanna needed a new plan. Her allies were being drawn away by more adversaries, and her technique of slowly weakening a larger opponent through blood loss was not applicable given the Nashorn’s armor. Thank Echeran, she had more than one trick up her sleeve. Instead of going again for a full-on attack, she opened the sealed container of poison darts at her hip and readied herself for a series of glancing blows aimed only at the joints and straps of the juggernaut’s armor. The darts rose like wasps behind her, silent for their lack of wings, and when she directed them at the opening she’d created at his shoulder, he bowled through them as though they were nothing.

Heat crackled along Osanna’s skin, and she was forced to drop her cloak of shadows, drawing frantically for more power from the battle and the waves. There was no time. Osanna was not a strong magic user, but the amount of Thunder that the Nashorn drew left a void in the energy of the night like a hole in the universe. It was the only warning she had before she flung herself away from the resulting blast, landing hard on her belly and pressing close to the damp earth. Wet seeped into the chinks in her armor, and she shivered even as heat scorched the air where she had been standing only moments before, singeing her back and shoulders. She panted for a beat, not entirely sure how it was possible that she was still alive.

There, just barely visible in the light of distant torches, Osanna could see the black of dart fletching against the giant’s shoulder. It worked! Now, to see if she could do it again. With the power she’d drawn, Osanna repeated her last attack against the Nashorn’s opposite shoulder, her last darts rising from her pouch.



T H E N A S H O R N


She had escaped. The Nashorn was beyond words. He howled and charged at her, but there were more of those darts: those accursed darts! She was accurate again too, and the little things were so hard to pick out in the haze of battle and all of its various energies until they hit. His other pauldron fell, and one of the straps holding his helmet on, but he stopped the final dart: the one that would've struck his opposite shoulder. For a moment, without his massive shoulder guards, the behemoth felt... just a little bit smaller, a little bit weaker. He felt - a wave of vertigo assaulted him, and he knew that something was wrong. That dart was poisoned. It had to have been poisoned. As panic set in, he felt for its insidious Essences and tried to smash every single one of them.

The Nashorn pounded away at the poison. He could feel it in his veins, in his muscles, in his head, and he hated it. Slowly, though, he won against it, and let out a roar of fury. He blinked, still not feeling completely his normal self, and began to gather energy for an attack to finish matters. The woman disappeared again before he could unleash his attack, shadow blows snaking out of the night to cut at his head and shoulders. She nicked the strap of his helm, but he lashed out with one manacled arm and kept her at bay.



O S A N N A


Osanna did not quite believe it when the Nashorn's gauntlet closed over her wrist. She was too fast for this—too clever. She did not get caught. With a punctuated shout, she lashed out at him with her free hand, but he grabbed it too, surprisingly fast, and panic finally began to set in, cold and squirming in her chest. The magic hiding her bled away, and she spat in his face, white foam bubbling on the juggernaut helm sitting loosely on his head. "I will not fear you!"

And then, the earth dropped away, the night blurring around her as the Nashorn swung Osanna over his head like a child having a tantrum. Frantically, she summoned Force energy, throwing it gracelessly against the ground to absorb the impact. The second time he slammed her into the earth, she was not fast enough. She heard her bones crack open in her forearm and collarbone before she felt them, and then the pain came like a wave, threatening to drown her senses. Tears streamed from her eyes, adding their moisture to the already muddy earth.

It wasn't over. Osanna screamed as the Nashorn yanked her up from the ground again, jagged bone tearing into flesh and tendon. She was going to die. The ground was rushing up to her, her body empty of power. She found the only thing she regretted was not sending the Nashorn to Echeran before her.

The impact never came. Water rushed up around Osanna, some other fighter's weapon now a cushion to her fall even as it soaked her armor and washed the sweat and dirt from her face in a rough torrent. The Nashorn staggered back, losing his grip, and Osanna was left splayed in the aftermath of the wave.

She was not whole, but she still had one good arm, and her sword had fallen between her and her quarry. A deadly, killing calm settled over her, clearing her head. Osanna would not die today.

And neither would she lose.

Osanna sucked in a breath, drew power, and tensed to spring, dashing across the ground in a head-long sprint. She grabbed her sword from the earth and whipped it up to attack the Nashorn, dancing away when he reached an arm up to block it. She would not be stupid enough to stay within his reach again.

"I hate you! You intruder, you poisoner of peace! I hate everything you stand for and every overpowered fiend like you! I mark you as belonging to the God of Death, heathen, and I will take your life in his name!"



T H E N A S H O R N


The blade clanked off of his armor, but a new caution had wound its way into the giant. He had no armor to cover his shoulders, and most of the rest of it was filled with heavy water that still dripped and trickled from the gaps, exposing clearly where they lay. The woman screamed at him, then, in a language that he did not understand, the same way that many had screamed at him.

The Nashorn did not care. He had been a weapon since he could walk, and it had brought him all that he had, all that he was. He had been 'stupid' in the eyes of all since he had failed to speak as a child. Voices flung at him like weapons were nothing new, and he would break them with deeds instead of further words.

This stinging one was wet: covered in water and holding metal. He pulled from the charges in the air and unleashed them upon her to stop that flapping mouth and those stinging hands.

She was too quick, her small form twisting out of the way like a dancer or a hawk in flight. Laughter burbled from her lips, a sound that carried across the field despite the noise of battle. And she was coming for him again. She was quick, but not quick enough to entirely avoid his blow. The horn gracing the top of his helm scored a deep line across her injured shoulder, and her laughter turned to screams.

For a moment, The Nashorn gloried in his triumph, but then her sword thrust up like a bullet to slip beneath the edge of his helmet and skewer him in the neck. He rolled to the side, and it lanced through his armpit instead. Ligaments and tendons snapped, and he roared in pain. The arm hung limp, and he glowered at her. They were up towards where the cliffs began, now, and there was material enough for something different. Instead of doing the obvious, however, he drew from the sand itself, making blades of it: blades of his own.

He flashed at her, artless but unstoppable, each blow heavy enough to bring death if it landed. She dodged him, nimble as a snake, and lunged forward, taking off his helm with a well-aimed strike. Her eyes widened, and he knew why, knew what she saw. He could see the image of him change in her eyes, from steel giant to soft, boyish man, all blond hair and plump cheeks. He growled, and one of his blades found the flesh of her hip.

The woman gasped and stumbled back, clutching the wound. For once, she did not try to strike him again, only disappeared for a moment, her magic faltering as she stumbled back to the walls, and sharp horn blasts signaled the Parrench retreat. The Nashorn leaned back, glaring at the sky in anger and frustration before forcing himself onward despite more wounds than he had suffered in years. He had not defeated her, but he would still prove his worth that night.


In The Sunday Group → 2 yrs ago Forum: Advanced Roleplay
Jaelle’s opinions on…

Malcador Ravenwood: "Somewhere between my best friend and an annoying brother I can't get rid of. Depends on the day, really."

Primrose Chastain: "Don't know her, but I don't like her either. It's not a fair judgment, but then again you can't get much further from the Roma lifestyle than an heiress born with a silver spoon in her mouth."

Fynn Laplace: "I love technology! Have you seen youtube? You can learn anything there! The day Flynn figures out how to let me interact with tech directly will be the second-best day of my unlife. That guy is great. Also, he's fun to mess with."

Eleanor Tregellan: "She's a friend that I have a lot of respect for. She's seen some crazy things, and she's still a good listener. I look up to her—despite the fact that I'm technically the oldest person here—, and find her attitude towards Mal absolutely hilarious. I know I can't like touch anything, but I want to prove that I'm useful."

Alyx Bellamy: "She's the new girl. It's always fun to see how The Sunday Group's neophytes react to the in-house spirit—you'd be surprised how many of these occult types are taken aback. I like all the music she makes just walking around the office, but find her germophobia absurd. Hand sanitizer didn't even exist when I died, and I was fine. Well, until I wasn't. LOL. But that, of course, had nothing to do with germs. It all started on a steaming day in Venice, Italy. It was too hot for one lover, never mind two, but who am I to say no? I snuck into..."
In The Sunday Group → 2 yrs ago Forum: Advanced Roleplay
Yay, we have a locale!

All of our characters have met before, and some have even known each other for a year or more. Even Primrose probably has a few opinions after a couple of months. Should we figure out what they think about each other and who gets along or doesn't before the rp?
In The Sunday Group → 2 yrs ago Forum: Advanced Roleplay
Question 1

My vote is New Orleans. Beignets and bearded oaks, historical buildings and sticky heat. Old magic and the yearly threat of flood by violent storms. It’s a crazy place.

Question 2

Mal and Jaelle have been working for the Sunday group off and on for a couple years.
In The Sunday Group → 2 yrs ago Forum: Advanced Roleplay
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