Shinai & Rajiv
Shinai the weasel lives in a dirt cheap, cramped, sparsely furnished dwelling in the burning hot Arizona desert. Weasels were long stereotyped as cowardly, so he first became a combatant to disprove that misconception and resist that label - he would...
Volk
In Volk's world, undeath ends up playing the social role of indefinite life extension reserved for the upper class. The wolf doesn't believe that there's such a thing as the afterlife, and unlike other undead-fighting heroes, he has no interest in...
Mandrake
Mandrake is from the Jungian, "left hand side" of psychology, not from the mainstream Freudian school at all, but from the movement which, even though it borrows from psychology itself for its own purposes, has been labeled the "anti-psychiatry"...
The Worm and the Fish
As the worm dangled on the end of his line, the fisherman became frustrated that none of the fish were biting, and began to curse the worm for being lousy bait. "Stupid worm", he said, "wriggling around like that and warning all the fish away. I swear...
Walden
Walden's mission in life is to deconstruct the many ways in which magic has been appropriated to serve the interests of the power structure at the expense of the general population - to use magic himself in ways that re-appropriate it while questioning...
Tandem
"I have to speculate that God himself did make us into corresponding shapes like puzzle pieces from the clay..." (Such Great Heights, The Postal Service) "I sometimes think that I'm too many people, too many people, too many people..." (Too Many...
Surface (Chapter 13)
"Boards don't fight back." - Bruce Lee The next morning, the first thing Klein had heard after having woken up had been the sound of Boko typing at his computer terminal. When he'd noticed that Klein had finally been up, Boko, ever the type to rise...
Surface (Chapter 12)
"People are at their most authentic when they're wearing masks." - Oscar Wilde Soon after they'd reached the village of the tribe of the Sahuagin itself, Klein had heard Boko greeting them in their native tongue and telling him the gist of what...
Surface (Chapter 11)
"Clothes do make the man. Naked people have almost no influence on society." - Mark Twain Boko's living quarters had looked like no other living quarters Klein had ever seen before in his life. A trapdoor concealed by sticks, moss, dirt and dead...
Surface (Chapter 10)
"All of us are looking for ourselves somewhere out there inside everyone we come across." - Carl Gustav Jung "When you pour tea into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Answer like an echo." - Bruce Lee Klein hadn't gone into the forest with any...
Surface (Chapter 9)
Klein had been a weird kid. In class, most teachers had resented him for scribbling, fidgeting, daydreaming and reading books they hadn't even mentioned instead of sitting still and paying attention all the time like he'd been supposed to, and most...
Surface (Chapter 8)
"Threefold is the faith of the embodied, which is inherent in their nature- the Satvic (pure), the Rajasic (passionate) and the Tamasic (dark)." - Bhagavad-Gita "Western time is ticking; Eastern time is breathing; capoeira time is pulsating." - ????...