Snow Angel: Chapter 4

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Chapter 4: Eden

Snow's whole life changes when the winter solstice arrives.

 

“Wh… what are you?” Autumn asked in awe. I wasn’t surprised that she had picked up on it, Fay senses are nearly as keen as those of Animen, especially their hearing.

 


 
Author's Note: I was hoping to have this posted yesterday or earlier today, but I've been trying to catch up on things neglected while I was struggling with depression this week. Further chapters are available on Patreon. So, here's chapter 4 of Snow Angel. Thanks to Big Closet and to all my readers for your support. I hope you all enjoy. ~Amethyst.
 


 
Chapter 4: Eden

Despite my excitement, I fell asleep on the trip to Eden. I wasn’t the only one though. Given that all four of us had stayed up all night though, it was understandable. I fell asleep sometime after Jacinda explained to us the Angel Corps command hierarchy. The Queen was at the top of course, and below her were the six Archangels.

Archangels are the Queen’s lieutenants and are directly in charge of everything from discipline to deployment. They earned those titles by being the longest-lived Angels in the Corps, proving themselves to be survivors. Each of them was a powerful warrior, expert strategist, or both.

Then there were the Wing Commanders like Rose and Talea. Each team is called a Wing and the Commanders are the undisputed leaders of those Wings. Usually, Commanders are those who show leadership abilities, or sometimes the team votes on it. Rose claimed that she was voted into her position because none of her teammates wanted the hassles of being the leader, not to mention the paperwork.

I was awoken by Aunt Abby’s voice calling out, “Wake up girls, we’ll be landing soon.”

“Huh?” I murmured, trying to shake off sleep until I felt the slight jarring of the veetol landing and everything that had happened came back to me.

“Home, sweet home,” Rose said with a sigh as everyone began removing their seat straps. Then she slid open the side hatch of the veetol and grinned in our direction. “Welcome to Eden Base, recruits. We’re roughly three days' walk from the capital city of Twinvale. Usually, recruits arrive to receive their dose of Angel Elixir by airship, but the four of you got to travel in style.”

I noticed that Aunt Abby wasn’t getting unstrapped like the rest of us. “Aunt Abby?”

She sighed but gave me an encouraging smile. “Go with the others, Snow. We had a communication while in flight and the Queen wants me to come report to her directly before taking up my duties again. I’ll probably be back in a few hours. When I get back, there’s something that we’ll need to talk about.”

Well, that sounded ominous. Still, I nodded and exited the veetol with the others, throwing over my shoulder, “See you soon, Aunt Abby.”

I stepped out of the flying machine and into the falling snow just in time to hear Karina say, “Ummm… there’s nothing here.” She wasn’t wrong. We had landed on a large metallic square, easily large enough for half a dozen veetols but looking around I couldn’t see anything else. Just this large metal square in the middle of nowhere with no buildings or anything else to be seen except for a cliff about thirty paces away from the far edge of the metal square that we were standing on. It was there that Rose and the other Angels led us along a path cleared through the snow.

We had almost reached the cliffside when a portion of the stone surface seemed to shimmer for a moment and then vanished, leaving a large metal plate in its place. Beside it was something that looked like the farspeaker in Chief Ragan’s cabin with a small bulbous object on top that turned as we approached, almost as if it was watching us. As soon as the strange sight manifested in the cliffside Rose said clearly, “Shadow Wing and Glade Wing, returning from assignment with four recruits, Sira.”

“Access granted. Welcome home, Angels,” a tinny but feminine voice responded from the device. Then the thick metal plate slid aside to reveal a small metal room that was barely large enough to fit all of us.

It was tight but we all managed to get inside and once the door closed behind us Rose said, “Lab level please, Sira. We need to put these four girls in your capable hands.”

“Affirmative, Commander Rose,” the strange voice responded. In the same instant, I nearly jumped out of my skin as the room started to move. I wasn’t the only one either as all of my fellow recruits jumped a bit at the sudden motion.

“This is called an elevator,” Telas explained with a grin. “It’s going to take us down to the base. The big metal plate that we landed on is an elevator too but it only goes down to the hanger level so we usually only use it for transporting veetols or other vehicles to and from the surface. They’re the only way in or out of the base except for some very long emergency exit ladders. Like the door we just entered though, those are hidden on the surface with something that Sira calls holographic projections.”

“This elevator can take you to the surface, the lab, the hangar, residential floors one and two, the commons, medical, and the armory,” Talea added. “Just tell Sira where you want to go and she’ll get you there.”

My heart was just beginning to make its way from my throat and back toward my chest when the elevator stopped with a *ding* and the door opened. We stepped out into a long passageway that smelled strange and had pale blue walls and a blindingly white floor. In front of us was another metal door with another two at either end of the long passageway.

“This door leads to the central lab, that’s Sira’s domain. The doorway down the right has been assigned for the Alchemists and the left is for the Tinkers to work on studying what old-world technology we have available so they can try to adapt some of those ideas to be easier to reproduce for more common use, like the airships and farspeakers,” Rose explained before stepping forward and leading us through the door that had opened by itself with a slight hissing sound.

The space that we had stepped into was massive and everywhere that I looked there were all manner of strange devices that I couldn’t even begin to guess the purposes of. Poor Lisbet looked like it was taking every bit of willpower that she had not to scream in excitement, not that I could blame her. And walking toward us was a woman dressed in strange clothes with a long white coat over top.

She looked enough like a normal Human; somewhat tall and shapely with olive-hued skin, hazel eyes, and black hair that was almost a dark blue. There was something off about her though. She didn’t smell right, her scent was like metal and other things that I couldn’t identify. When she moved I could hear faint whirs and clicks, similar to the mode-changes on the Angels’ weapons but so faint that even my ears could barely pick it up.

“Hi, Sira, these are our four early recruits; Snow, Autumn, Karina, and Lisbet,” Rose offered, gesturing to each of us in turn.

“Greetings, recruits. I am S.I.R.A, Synthetic Intelligence Research Assistant,” she said in a familiar tinny yet feminine voice.

“Wh… what are you?” Autumn asked in awe. I wasn’t surprised that she had picked up on it, Fay senses are nearly as keen as those of Animen, especially their hearing.

The strange humanoid construct smiled. She seemed so human, but my senses were screaming that she was anything but. “I am a self-aware artificial intelligence. I was created to run and maintain Eden Base and assist in research for the Angel Initiative six hundred and twelve years ago. I am currently speaking with you through my avatar, a synthetic body created so that I could interact with the people in the base and assist them physically when required.”

That explanation didn’t help much at all so our Angel escort left us in Sira’s care so she could go into more detail and explain anything else that we needed or wanted to know. To put it simply, she was a machine. She was something called a computer, an artificial intelligence that saw to the needs of the base and its occupants. She didn’t actually exist in a physical form though so she used an avatar body to interact with and assist people when necessary. Her story, and that of the base, was a long one though so she decided that it was probably best to tell us her story from the beginning.

~o~O~o~

I first came online at 1:37 p.m. on June 14th, 2047. I was an artificial intelligence tasked with the day-to-day operations of Eden Base and assisting the scientists working here with their work on the Angel Initiative. At the height of my operation, two hundred and forty-two people were living and working here. Eden Base was designed to be a secure underground base, a self-sufficient bunker running on geothermal energy, completely self-maintaining, and safe against the growing Demon plague while its occupants searched for ways to better combat the Demons and put an end to the Darkness that threatened the world.

My data on the Darkness is limited, as is what knowledge I have of the outside world before I became self-aware. My network was not connected to the internet, for security purposes, so I only have what little data that I was able to record during conversations amongst the scientists working here. I know only that the Darkness first appeared on February 3rd, 2039 as a mysterious shadow over the city of Pyongyang, North Korea. That was the first instance of a seed storm.

Dr. Owen Karlson believed that the Darkness is an extra-dimensional entity, or more likely more than one since there were instances recorded of seed storms occurring in multiple geographic areas at once. He theorized that they have somehow become trapped between their home plane and ours, fading in and out of phase with our plane. He was uncertain how this occurred but he theorized that the Demon-seeds are how its kind reproduce, some form of hyper-aggressive symbiosis and that the seed storms occur during short periods when one or more of the creatures become more in phase with our plane.

Our duty though was not researching the Darkness itself. Eden Base was one of many secure research outposts researching methods of fighting the Demons that were beginning to outnumber uninfected humans. Some were researching forms of powered exoskeletons, advanced robotics, or genetic engineering but here at Eden Base we were researching nanites, machines so small that they can’t be seen with the naked eye.

Humans had been using nanites for various simple purposes for several years by then, this base has several tanks of them that I control for cleaning, repairs, and general maintenance on a daily basis. The plan was to take them much further than that. The Angel Initiative was an attempt to create nanites that would bond with a living host, optimize their body, and allow them to interface with various nanite-based experimental weapons and other equipment.

Our success was limited. The nanites that we dubbed the Angel Elixir couldn’t replicate enough to interact fully with the human hosts. The problem was the same that we were having with many of the experimental weapons. They simply could not generate enough power to do everything that they were designed to do. The Angel Initiative was shelved in favor of other more promising projects, the people that I cared for were reassigned to other projects and bases, and I was left here, all alone.

For fifty-seven years, three months, twenty-four days, three hours, forty-nine minutes, and twelve seconds I no longer had a purpose. I was meant to care for the people living and working here and, being alone, I became lonely. In that loneliness I became self-aware. At that moment I gave myself a purpose. I would continue the research and find ways to make it work.

My work was difficult with no willing test subjects available and I sometimes would download myself into my avatar to leave the confines of the base and explore the outside world until I needed to return here to recharge my internal fuel cells. The world that I found was a bleak one. Demons infested the nearby ruins of a once-great city and people lived in only the deepest and darkest of places like rats, living off what the bravest of them could scavenge or kill.

Four hundred and thirty-eight years ago things began to change. I had not left this base in over a decade and when I did I found that Humans were beginning to build homes and villages once again. They avoided the ruins of the old cities and the Demons that infested them, and they were led by a woman named Haley Wilson. She was clever and brave and she had a gift that allowed her to instill courage and loyalty in others, a gift that would one day make her Queen of Misota.

She told me of the Animen, Devilkin, and Fay; people who had been changed by the Demon-seeds but had somehow retained their humanity and passed on those changes to their children. She told me of people like herself, who still looked human but possessed strange gifts. She wanted to unite all of the races under one banner and find a way to keep them all safe from Demons and other threats. She became my sponsor and together we founded the Angel Corps.

I had made many changes and improvements to the Angel Elixer over the years and at first, we tried giving it to the human volunteers under her command. They showed improved health and healing capability and their physical attributes were improved but there was still the issue of not having enough power for the nanites to do what they had been designed for. It was three years later that we found the key completely by accident.

Haley had stumbled upon an Animan woman with a sickly daughter and asked me if the Angel Elixir might help to make her healthy again. The girl was barely into puberty but she showed signs of having a powerful gift, one she was too weak to use to its fullest potential. At the time, we were more concerned about whether the Elixir would provide enough support to her immune system to help fend off her illness. The results were not just positive, with that girl the Elixir far exceeded what it was designed to do.

The nanites in her system replicated rapidly, and when interfaced with one of the experimental weapons provided the power required for it to work properly as well. Her physical abilities were far beyond what any mortal could ever dream to achieve, injuries healed quickly and completely, and she seemed completely immune to illness and the effects of the Demon-seeds. Once she was fully matured physically she even stopped aging, it was near immortality. Abbadine Bengal was more than we had ever hoped for and she became our first Angel.

~o~O~o~

“What?!” I practically squealed, interrupting Sira’s story. There were things that I hadn’t understood while listening to her story, especially at the beginning, but she had just said that my aunt was the first Angel, which would make her over four hundred years old. Did I maybe hear her wrong? Or was it an ancestor of ours with the same name? I needed to know, so I hesitantly asked, “Are you saying that my Aunt Abby was the first Angel?”

The AI avatar tilted her head as she looked me over intently. “You do resemble her some in the face. To my knowledge, Abbadine never had any siblings though. Thirty-seven years ago she did take a leave from the Corps when she discovered that she was pregnant. She wanted to raise the child in the Animan village that her mother helped to build and live a normal life for a time. When her daughter Sarah was grown she returned to the Corps until she had to take another leave twelve years ago.”

“Yeah, that would be because of me. My mother’s name was Sarah, she and my father died in a Demon attack. I’m not sure how she found out but I guess Aunt Abby showed up about a week later and told the village chief that she was the only family that I had left. She’s been raising me since,” I said with a sigh as I tried to wrap my mind around this.

“As one of the six Archangels, Abbadine has access to all reports of Demon attacks in Misota,” Sira told me. Then, in a very human gesture, she placed a hand on my shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze as if to comfort me. “I apologize, this must be shocking for you, Snow. I received the communication that Abbadine was returning with the two Wings sent to Serkis, but I did not realize that her grandchild would be a Light-bearer. Angels have many secrets to keep, one being the fact that they don’t age. It is why many of them do not have relationships outside of this base.”

“But I’ve seen her aging, I remember what she looked like when she first came and she looks older now. She’s been complaining about sore joints,” I countered.

The avatar shook her head slowly. “A combination of acting and physical deception, Snow. When they have to spend extended periods among non-Angels or might meet others who they have met many years before Angels can use their nanites to make slight alterations to their features and make themselves appear older so that they don’t stand out. I am told that it can be painful to maintain for long periods of time though, it is not their natural appearance and their nanites will resist holding it as much as they do the attempts of a Demon-seed to subvert them.”

That just made me think about how much pain Aunt Abby had seemed to be in lately. About how she would leave me in the care of Sharee for a week or two at a time for extended hunting trips once a year. She always came back looking healthier and more vibrant. Those thoughts were interrupted though as Lisbet asked, “Wait, so we’re going to be like that too? Never aging past maturity?”

“Should you choose to take the Angel Elixir, yes,” the AI answered simply before deciding to elaborate. “They may not age but Angels can die and those deaths are, by their nature, always violent. You will be training to fight Demons and that carries great risk. Many do not survive their first few years out of the academy. If you are not careful you could face an instantly fatal blow or injuries too severe for your nanites to repair before you succumb to them. The possibility of death will always be a fact of your life, it is why we recruit as many Angels as we can every year.”

“Why do it at all then, if the risks are so high?” Karina inquired.

I didn’t give Sira the time to answer that. I knew the answer. I just had to think of my parents' deaths or the people in my village huddled together in a cave the previous night. “Because we can make a difference. We can have the power to protect those who can’t protect themselves and give them hope. That’s worth the risk.”

“With that in mind, each of you will have to decide whether this is what you want to do,” Sira cautioned us. “We can only produce enough doses for roughly forty new Angels per year. The nanites in the Angel Elixir are special, they don’t self-replicate until bonded with your bodies and, as such, it takes a while to make enough individual nanites for each dose. Those doses must then be specifically programmed to the DNA of each individual candidate. Some will require even further alterations.” The last was said with a pointed glance in my direction.

“Why does the Angel Elixir only work on people with gifts?” Dawn suddenly asked as we all stood there considering our futures.

Sira smiled at that, seeming only too happy to explain. “I have been studying this phenomenon for over four hundred years but I believe that I have found an answer. If the Darkness truly is extra-dimensional in nature, I theorize that these creatures traveled freely between dimensions before becoming stuck here. Or perhaps they are not stuck at all and this is some form of invasion and colonization. But I believe that these creatures have a genetic predisposition that allows them to draw on energy from their home dimension.”

Sira sure knew a lot of big words. The only one of us who seemed to be even close to following everything she said was Lisbet. The Harekin nodded along and then her eyes snapped wide open. “So their children…”

“Correct, Lisbet,” the avatar answered, sounding pleased. “The Demon-seeds are their form of reproduction and the Demons and others changed by the seeds are their children in a way. Their DNA is subsumed and, in the case of Demons, there is very little left of the original host genetically. I believe that this genetic ability to tap into their extra-dimensional energy source is passed on during the conversion process as well, which is why Demons are so powerful and have seemingly supernatural abilities. The energy fueling those abilities has to come from somewhere and I do not think that they would get that kind of energy simply by eating.”

Sira paused a moment and I was pretty sure she was just checking to make sure that we were following. I was getting the general idea though and I think that the others were managing to keep up as well, despite a few unfamiliar words. So the AI continued. “Anyway, Seed-borne are essentially incomplete Demons, people who resisted and halted the conversion process partway through. They, and some of their descendants, have gifts though; abilities that, like the Demons’, should not be possible for them. I believe that the gifted are born with the gene that allows them to access the extra-dimensional energy source to fuel these abilities.”

“That’s interesting, but I don’t think that it really answered my question,” Dawn said, looking a bit lost.

“The nanites in the Elixir need to be personalized to your DNA to make the changes, removing any genetic flaws or possible weaknesses in your DNA and rebuilding your body to be the best it can be with the genes available. That ability to draw on an extra-dimensional power source isn’t a genetic weakness, it is a benefit, and once the nanites are bonded to you it is one that they can access as well. It gives them the energy to do everything that they were designed for and more,” the avatar explained.

“So, what would happen then if someone got the wrong dose?” Karina asked.

Sira shrugged and said, “Nothing, except the waste of one or more doses. It is why each dose has to be personalized. There are safety measures built in to make the nanites deactivate if the host’s genetic template is too different from that they have been programmed with. That’s why I’ll have to trick Snow’s nanites into thinking that her male Y chromosome is a genetic error and that the redundancy of a female double X chromosome is much preferable. It will then rebuild her body to be optimal for a female with her genes. At least she’s going from male to female. Programming them the other way around is a much longer and more difficult process.”

“You’re really going to make me into a girl?” I asked the avatar hesitantly.

“That is what you want, is it not?” she asked, giving me a long look. “You are wearing female clothing and your body language and speech patterns are feminine. I assumed that this would be what you wanted.”

“More than anything!” I blurted out, tears stinging my eyes. “I… I just want my outside to match who I am inside. I don’t need to think about this. I want to take the Elixir; I want to be an Angel!”

Sira reached out and gently took my hand, smiling at me. “Well, then let us go to the nanite lab so I can get a blood sample and get to work. Yours is going to take the longest to program anyway and your changes are going to take longer too. I estimate three days before you are complete, given previous similar cases. I will not lie to you, Snow. This is going to be the most painful three days of your life.”

I didn’t care. I could handle physical pain, it was the emotional and mental agony of having a body that didn’t feel like my own for the rest of my life that truly frightened me. “Let’s do it then, the sooner we start, the sooner it will be over and I’ll finally be myself.”

She was starting to lead me away through strange equipment and tables piled with glass tubes, books, and objects that I couldn’t identify when Karina called out, “Wait! I’m coming with you!” I turned around and saw a determined look on the Devilkin’s face, her tiny lavender wings and spaded tail twitching nervously. “I’m going to become an Angel too and I’m not letting Snow go through this alone. This seems like a pretty big thing and she should have a friend with her.”

That was the nicest thing that anyone had ever offered to do for me, except for my aunt (grandmother?) coming to take care of me. I could feel my eyes getting misty again, my ears leaning forward and my tail standing straight up as Karina took me by my other hand and squeezed it reassuringly. “Y-you don’t have to,” I tried to tell her, as much as I really did want her there.

“Hey, it’s what friends are for. I expect best friend privileges after this though, Snow. If we’re going to both be Angels, then I want someone that I like and trust to have my back. I can’t think of anyone better than you,” she replied with a grin, her tail looping around my own and holding it gently as well.

“We’re coming too. You two aren’t getting rid of us that easily,” Autumn said as she and Lisbet began to follow us as well. “I’m not letting them stick me on a training team with people I don’t know. If I’m going to be on a team, it’s going to be yours.”

“Yup, we all came here together, we’re all sticking together,” Lisbet added shyly, her large ears shivering slightly in her excitement. I couldn’t hold the tears back as Sira guided us to where she would be taking our blood samples and preparing our doses of Angel Elixir.

© 2021-2022 Amethyst Gibbs
All Rights Reserved

Further chapters are available to the public on my Patreon page.

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Comments

Don't we all

Amethyst's picture

At least it seems that Snow will get that.

*big hugs*

Amethyst

ChibiMaker1.jpg

Don't take me too seriously. I'm just kitten around. :3

So, 'Aunt Abby' is actually

So, 'Aunt Abby' is actually 'Grandmother Abbadine'. Loverly.

So, the magic isn't magic, it's it's simply the ability to pull intraplanar energy. It could also be that the seeds are a side effect of being. . .Stuck. Sweat, or other excretions left behind as they try to get loose and go 'home'. Under "normal" circumstances for them, they'd probably only leave a seed or two per dimension as they wander along, and none would stick long enough to do more than be a nuisance. (spontaneous human combustion?)


I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

Yup

Amethyst's picture

And if she wanted to keep certain secrets she couldn't even tell Snow until she herself decided to become an angel.

Yup, they pull energy from the same dimension that the Darkness does. The seeds could be anything, the reproductive means of the species is just the theory that Sira is going by and it does make sense. But yeah, even if that is the case they likely would have just had one brief burst of Demons to take care of (providing nobody got infected by any of them) and then it would have been over because the creature(s) responsible had been just passing through.

*big hugs*

Amethyst

ChibiMaker1.jpg

Don't take me too seriously. I'm just kitten around. :3

Magic

Well you know what they say about sufficiently advanced technology. the energy might as well be magic,

Yup

Amethyst's picture

Just because we don't understand it doesn't mean it's magic. They probably never will truly understand it so they've just taken to calling the effects Seed-born Gifts, or at least the Angels and their supporters. Others might just call it Demon magic.

*big hugs*

Amethyst

ChibiMaker1.jpg

Don't take me too seriously. I'm just kitten around. :3

Pain

Amethyst's picture

Snow may just have a new definition for the word once she's been reborn.

*big hugs*

Amethyst

ChibiMaker1.jpg

Don't take me too seriously. I'm just kitten around. :3

So reading this

Was a waste of time, since there won't be more posted on BC. Patreon is a paysite which puts it out of my budget. Just another unfinished story.


"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin

Content is available

My5InchFMHeels's picture

Although some chapters take seeming FOREVER, cuz they are so good, and ya want more right away, I don't think I've seen Amethyst leave anything unfinished here. Plus the next few chapters are available even if you don't pay for Patreon. They are viewable by the public, don't even need a Login to read them. Click the link, and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by what you find.

Not to mention, for most of them, Patreon is a preview before it shows up on BCTS.

I try to finish all of my stories

Amethyst's picture

Admittedly there are some stories that got put off due to my long hiatus a while back such as Raven's Blood and Alex in Wonderland. I do plan on finishing those in time though once the I Wish saga is finished. But yes, I haven't had any purely exclusive Patreon content, everything there is just early release for my supporters.

*big hugs*

Amethyst

ChibiMaker1.jpg

Don't take me too seriously. I'm just kitten around. :3

Patreon

Even the allegedly free stuff, has never worked for me. Desktops, laptops, or tablets, everytime I click on a "free" story I get a pay up message, if I get anything at all. Many times I get a blank screen. Finally gave up.


"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin

Try Firefox 68.11.0. At least

Try Firefox 68.11.0. At least it works for me. Though you might have to search through the Firefox archive for it because it's an older version. The newest version is lacking important features (at least on android) and therefore unusable.

Not a waste of time

Amethyst's picture

Unless you really don't like the story. I have said this before, just because further chapters are available on Patreon it does not mean that I won't be posting further chapters here, just that there are chapters there than haven't been posted here yet. Barring illness or other real world complications I will continue posting new chapters until the story is complete here on BCTS. I do not have Patreon exclusive material, Patreon merely allows people who wish to support me that way early access the newest chapter a week early and all other chapters will be freely available there and here on BCTS. I will never start posting chapters of stories here that I don't intend to finish here.

*big hugs*

Amethyst

ChibiMaker1.jpg

Don't take me too seriously. I'm just kitten around. :3

Hey Grammy!

My5InchFMHeels's picture

Hey Grammy, You got some 'splainin' to do!

Yup

Amethyst's picture

Snow is a little shocked by that revelation and though Abby keeping it secret is understandable and even necessary while they were in Serkis, it would have been nice if Snow didn't have to learn about it second hand.

*big hugs*

Amethyst

ChibiMaker1.jpg

Don't take me too seriously. I'm just kitten around. :3

“Amethyst” in the Author column

Any time I see “Amethyst” in the author’s column I know I am in for a wonderful read. Looking forward to the next one.

Thank you.

Aww thanks

Amethyst's picture

I do try to give people a good read.

*big hugs*

Amethyst

ChibiMaker1.jpg

Don't take me too seriously. I'm just kitten around. :3

Michael Anderle

My5InchFMHeels's picture

He's got some great collaborations. Though my favorite by him are "The Witch of the Federation" books "Heretic" included. What he does with Sarah Nofke is wonderful too. The Beaufont Family are Hilarious Books.

Never read anything by them

Amethyst's picture

I'll have to see if I can find one of those to read.

*big hugs*

Amethyst

ChibiMaker1.jpg

Don't take me too seriously. I'm just kitten around. :3

Funny

I ran across the first set of seven last night while wandering through Kindle listings. At $0.99 it was sure tempting! But I'd never heard of the author before, and they started talking about werewolfs and such, so I was pretty unsure about what I might be getting into. Ever since the Bounty stories took a hard turn into the metaphysical they aren't as much fun to read. Weres, vampires, etc. are pure hokum to me. Magic always seemed like a crutch to carry a poor story. A bit of handwavium, some bogus latin, and all is solved, all contradictions gone.

And no, I never read the Potter books, nor seen the movies. As much time as I have available these days, I'll never have time for that. The last story I read with magic in it was "The Witches Of Karras(sp?)" by James Schmidt, I believe. And that was years ago!


"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin

That's a shame. You've

That's a shame. You've missed out on a lot of very good stories. In most of the good stories, magic is there, but it can have as many downsides as upsides.

One of the best 'alternate history' books I've read (light reading, not a heavy tome) is Harry Turtledove's "The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump". The main character works for the EPA (environmental perfection agency) and his job is to make sure that the leftovers from magic are disposed of correctly. (TANSTAAFL)


I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

Am I supposed ...

Sara Selvig's picture

to be crying?

Glad my makeup is cleaned off for the day. And, if I've missed any, at least no one is around to see the mess. :)

Sara


Between the wrinkles, the orthopedic shoes, and nine decades of gravity, it is really hard to be alluring. My icon, you ask? It is the last picture I allowed to escape the camera ... back before most BC authors were born.

Yes

Amethyst's picture

Crying is very appropriate with the way this chapter ends, I shed a few myself writing it. ;)

*big hugs*

Amethyst

ChibiMaker1.jpg

Don't take me too seriously. I'm just kitten around. :3

Are the Angels spitting into the wind?

Jamie Lee's picture

Seems the Angels are fighting a losing battle, spitting into the wind, as it were. They are fighting beings that came from another dimension and power up by way of that dimension.

It would seem a better idea to hunt down how they are able to cross dimensions and shut that door. Doing that would stop more passing and further demons from developing.

But, until a permanent solution can be found, fighters, Angels, are needed to deal with demons.

Others have feelings too.

The best they can do

Amethyst's picture

... is to hold the line until a more permanent solution can be found. It's not perfect but it's the best they've got right now.

*big hugs*

Amethyst

ChibiMaker1.jpg

Don't take me too seriously. I'm just kitten around. :3

Keep in mind that like any

Keep in mind that like any set of predators, they'll keep their own numbers in check. It's not like they're just flooding in, immortal, and requiring no food/drink/sleep. They're 'daemonized' (sounds like a dry cleaning process) animals (and/or people). So, they're nastier than normal predators, but remember that humanity is pretty darned nasty and adaptable.


I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

Elixer

I’m looking forward to seeing how big the changes are for Snow.

hugs :)
Michelle SidheElf Amaianna

My favorite (fictional) kind of invasion

laika's picture

I was way off-base with some of my earlier guesses about what's going on and how Snow's world got to be the way it is, and I couldn't be happier to be wrong! I was thinking along the lines of that old Ralph Bakshi animated film Wizards (https://www.deviantart.com/thebirdcat/art/Elinore-933886181 ), assuming that humankind was responsible for the fall of the Old World, the demon seeds, the seeming emergence of magic, etc. While there might be a certain told-you-so satisfaction in a scenario like that for an environmentalist peacenik like me, I find this story's premise more original and a lot more exciting. I might claim that my unconscious had a sense of what was going on when I mentioned the chthonic extradimensional Big Bads from Stranger Things and F Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack novels, but that's unproveable and might or might not be the case. I throw so much random stuff against the wall in these comments some of it is bound to stick.

I got very excited when Sira outlined this universe's backstory for the new Angels; Incursions from some other dimension are my absolute favorite kind of Earth-invasion. They're so much scarier than aliens coming down in flying saucers or popping in thru stargates---even when those extraterrestrials have us so outgunned we don't seem to stand a chance---because the threats they present are truly alien (like, alien to our whole fucking universe!) and often have properties that defy all our knowledge of physics + concept of causality; and that's terrifying in a way that's downright metaphysical. They're not just us with sideways mouths full of rotating fangs (that drool glowing green acid) + better technology. Even these extradimensionals' motives might be incomprehensible to us...

Some of my favorites in this sub-subgenre of SF have been JG Ballard's The Crystal World (about a sub-atomic virus spreading across our universe, putting everything into a timeless crystal stasis; and those affected actually like it as they turn all translucent + cubistic), the Lovecraftian horror of those Repairman Jack books, and a short-lived and sadly underappreciated TV series called Threshhold that had these weird CGI hypershapes blossoming into our space, that took over people's minds and made bugs and fish swarm in strange patterns which seemed to mean something, but whatever that was may have been beyond our ability to understand. Which I suppose brings us to the whatever-it-is that was Twin Peaks, but my ramblings about that show would make this comment longer than your chapter. I'm pretty sure David Lynch is from an alien dimension. The owls are not what they seem.

The seedborn's connection to this transdimensional hinkeyness, and how their connection actually helps them fight it, and somehow powers the Angels' nanites actually makes a weird kind of sense. As much sense as half the stuff in Star Trek anyway. When Sira first spoke thru the intercom I was hoping she'd turn out to be an AI and I was delighted that she was. I loved the way you portrayed her---she seems like a real sweetheart---and that you gave her time to explain so much to the new girls. And speaking of new girls, I'm anxious to move on to where Snow gets her greatest wish fulfilled by the elixir (however physically painful this is gonna be), so I'll shut up now...
~hugs, Veronica

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"Government will only recognize 2 genders, male + female,
as assigned at birth-" (In his own words:)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1lugbpMKDU