“Regardless, we weren’t in there long… A couple of nights, as best we could tell, before we were dragged out down Mawk’s Mantle. That leaves us back where we started, I guess – the flickering dawn, the stage, the bismuth nooses, that bloody heron. Funny what your mind notices in the direst moments.”

cw: betrayal, death, violence, arrest  

“Boctive Deign, Xenarus Crow, Neah nim Gorse – they’d fill the air with blood and smoke. Their treachery had already claimed Boleth and Serrivomer, they came for us next.

There are those that rightly call the Lodge a sanctuary, but I will never step foot there again. For me that place is nowt but a tomb, in its halls our revolution is buried.”

c/w body horror, family conflict, betrayal

“Embrace is a hole. A rip in the heart of the world. It’s like the gardens of Crown’s Ait – petal and green cloistered by wall from the world around. Ordered sweeps of fragrant colour and soft, useless lawn. Beautiful, I’m sure, but that beauty belies the effort put into maintaining it”

c/w violence, police, outer-body experiences

“A tree of crimson and bone that grew down miles, visible despite the layers of architecture between, its every inch of growth fuelled by the centuries of us. Our blessings and our bonds, our lusting and loving and hoping and playing and learning and striving.”

c/w violence, betrayal, body horror (ghosts)

“Ask me to talk about history and politics and you’ll be stuck for hours; ask me about the forces that shape our world and my tongue is still. I place my faith in others interpretations and what they say happened – a new Remnant awoke in Embrace that day.”

c/w gore, loss of identity, body horror (ghosts)

“As we lay entangled, fingers on each other’s throats, the roots and tendrils of something new grew around us.”

c/w thought invasion, injury, explosions

“If we had one advantage, it was that we faced them on our own turf. Most of the fighting would take place amongst the gambling dens and race courses of Hinter Ward. If there were anywhere suited to turn the odds, it were there.”

c/w intense peril, kettling, implied death

“From Crown’s Ait, three columns of nim Shif soldiers marched on us, followed by Ministers and the Lanterns and the fucking Swifts. And at their head Valour and Vigor themselves, armour gleaming and spears in hand, come to remove the last bit of grit from the shine of their ambition.

The second siege of Tail’s End were upon us and we welcomed it.”

c/w mindreading, manipulation, surveillance, betrayal, break-ups

“But then our triumph broke, torn asunder not by those whose noses we’d bloodied to build it, but those who’d helped us fight for it. Boctive Deign, Xenarus Crow. They’d always held fear in their hearts. That fear would poison our fragile course.”

c/w murder, assassination, heavy wounds, explosions, jailbreak, unreality

“Already, there were tears forming in the fabric of our banners. Soon, we’d all be grasping at them, each claiming that we should be the ones to hold them aloft. We’d tear the whole canvas apart.”