Filling the Void - Chapter Twenty
Negin Mal was as perturbed as Victus had ever seen him. "Is this really necessary?" he spat, his single-minded resistance against the inevitable reminding Victus of the time he had given Master Uhlu's cat a flea bath. Leland took his attention away...
Filling the Void - Chapter Nineteen
"So what's this guy like?" Lucas asked, as he smoothed wrinkles from his shirt. "You know, really. The way everyone gets that weird look in their eyes whenever someone mentions his name, he must be a real piece of work." "If by, 'a piece of work' you...
Filling the Void - Chapter Eighteen
Their hunger sated, Lucas and Victus retired to their shared room. As they passed the negin's private suite, the sound of a child's giggly laughter reached them through the closed door. Lucas raised an eyebrow. "He has kids?" "No," Victus said, trying...
Filling the Void - Chapter Seventeen
Victus flowed through his Tai Chi forms with the peaceful grace of a fish gliding through water. The cool dawn air, made humid by the surrounding acres of grass growing unnaturally on this near-desert world, felt dense and energizing as it moved in and...
Filling the Void - Chapter Sixteen
"He hardly calls any more," Dagen complained, knowing full well that he sounded like a churlish old fishwife but not caring enough to stop. "I almost feel as if I've been abandoned." "You got along just fine before you had Victus in your life," Abbot...
Filling the Void - Chapter Fifteen
The door to the passenger cell of the robotic shuttle opened with a pneumatic hiss. The lone passenger stepped into a large aerodome that smelled strongly of the same ozone and synthetic lubricants that seemed ubiquitous among spaceports across the...
Filling the Void - Chapter Fourteen
**_Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries..._ Victus thought, as he scanned the surrounding terrain with his ocular magnifiers. The child is always pushing boundaries... He'd arrived at his client's manor three months earlier as an honored guest, the pomp...
Filling the Void - Chapter Eleven
Dagen was well into his sixth hour of sleep when something small and warm poked his exposed arm. In a stupor he shuffled away from the intrusion, his tired body encouraging his mind to return to its rightful place beneath the evening tides. "Mister...
Filling the Void - Chapter Ten
Dagen checked his appearance in the wall mirror hanging beside his front door. He wasn't a particularly vain man, but after having appeared in public one too many times with uncombed hair and/or a raisin stuck to his tooth, he'd decided that putting a...
Filling the Void - Chapter Nine
"What are we going to do today?" Victus asked, brightly. His tail brushed back and forth with restrained energy. If Dagen had a tail, his would have been wagging as well. He knew that tail control was high on the list of _varius_ etiquette, but the...
Filling the Void - Chapter Eight
Virtual though they might be, the stack of file folders on Dagen's desktop was still imposing. Each folder represented one of Master Nolan's students, and contained every scrap of information the Kenzine Order had collected about that child's past...
Filling the Void - Chapter Seven
Victus had only vague recollections about the days following the wreck which killed his parents, but he did remember that his body felt almost as battered as it did today. There was not a muscle in him that didn't groan in protest with the slightest...