Temple of the Lizard Bride
_The Loving Lantern_ was teeming with various races doing their level best to drown post-battle emotions with food and drink. A thick haze in the air indicated that heavy use of the available hookahs facilitated the merriment. Two...
Consecration of the Lizard Temple
A man staggering in with a large lizardfolk in a bridal carry was one of the more unusual occurrences he had witnessed in his establishment, and the innkeeper gawped in mute confusion. The lizard's discomfort with the situation was poorly...
JIH Chapter 1: A Ticket to Anywhere
The airport was a madhouse. Christmas day was looming and the weather wasn't eager to cooperate. Everyone had somewhere else to be for the holiday and no time left to get there. Delays, delays, delays... everything was behind even as more people filed...
JIH Chapter 2: Knife to Meet You
It was a trick. It had to be, there was no other explanation. I waved my phone around, trying to acclimate my eyes to the poor lighting. I sloshed through ankle deep water as I wandered back and forth where the door had...
JIH Chapter 3: A Snail's Pace
Okay, it would be really nice if I could wake up, because I was definitely dreaming. There's no way that the horror that I was backpedaling from could be real. There was something like a snail following me, only it was huge! A...
JIH Chapter 9: Jungle for the Trees
Thick tangled vines with pulsating orange veins, red serrated leaves that cut like paper, and barbed thorns blocked my way. Yellow, viscid sap squirted out of any vine I managed to slice, but it was less cutting and more beating them into...
JIH Chapter 8: Point the Way
"Zoe!" I sloshed through a mire with the consistency and color of old, runny pistachio pudding. The stench was overwhelming and I concentrated on keeping my stomach down. The wide space between several of the ancient fallen trees had...
JIH Chapter 6: Bask in the Glow
The shrubbery started to get denser, larger, and healthier as the ground continued to level out. The loose shale gave way to large chucks of rocks and boulders that had long since rolled down the mountainside, forcing me to climb over or...
JIH Chapter 4: Nightbane
The darkness of the cave was absolute and I couldn't even tell if my eyes were open or closed. I had never experienced such a complete sensory loss before and not even being blindfolded could compare to it. At least when you wear...
JIH Chapter 5: Probing Questions
It took me a while to fully accept that the sky that had been ripped right out of a cheap sci-fi flick was real even though it was completely absurd. Planets can't be that close together, yet there they were hanging in the sky, hazed by the...
JIH Chapter 7: In Deep
Zoe took the loss of Rockie rather hard considering how blase she had been about my eventual demise. Since the situation I found myself in made said demise a high possibility, I wasn't in a mourning mood about an overgrown...