The Thing That Happened at the Grocery Store

I was having a bad week.

Not dramatic-bad.

Just the grinding kind.

The kind where nothing is catastrophically wrong but everything feels slightly too heavy and you’re moving through days like you’re walking in wet sand. I was at a grocery store, running on four hours of sleep, holding a basket with three things in it that I couldn’t remember why I needed.

The cashier...middle-aged woman, name tag I didn’t read, clearly running on her own version of wet sand...looked up when I got to the counter and said, “Hey. You look like you’re doing the hard thing today. Good for you.”

She didn’t know me.

I didn’t know her.

Have no idea what she saw in my face or why she said it.

…but it completely changed the trajectory of my day and how I was able to cope with the continual challenges.

Problems became ‘challenges’.

…and I’m usually up for a challenge.

The Ripple You Can’t See

Here’s the thing about impact.

We’re terrible at measuring it.

We assume the moments that matter are the ones that feel significant while they’re happening...the big conversation, the speech, the perfectly timed piece of advice.

The moments with weight you can feel.

But most of the ripples happen quietly.

In the margin of someone else’s day.

In the small thing you did without thinking because it’s just how you move through the world.

The writer who shows up in someone’s inbox every week and keeps showing up, even when the numbers are small...there’s a reader out there who opens that email before they open anything else. Who has never commented, never replied, never given any external signal.

But they’re there.

And your ordinary consistency is something they count on in a way you’ll never fully understand.

The creator who almost quit last year and didn’t...someone found that work during their own worst week. Someone needed exactly that story at exactly that moment.

You’ll probably never know which one or when.

That’s not a reason to inflate your sense of importance.

It’s a reason to stop underestimating your ordinary.

What Writers Get Wrong About Influence

Most writers I know are waiting to matter at scale.

Waiting for the big numbers.

The viral post.

The moment the audience is large enough that the impact feels real and visible and provable.

Until then...they’re not sure it counts.

But influence doesn’t work like that.

It works more like water, as it finds the cracks.

It goes where it goes, often sideways, often in directions you never intended, often years after the thing was made.

I remember getting an email from a young lady, thanking me for the Wanted Hero comic books. She’d been introduced to them by her little brother. I thought that was sweet, but the message changed.

This young lady had been in a car accident.

She was never going to walk again and was living at the hospital, refusing to go through physical therapy.

Her little brother showed up with my comic books to show her a hero that did hard things, even when he didn’t really want to…to try and motivate her not to give up.

It had worked. She was emailing me to tell me so.

She told me her therapy was going well and she was adjusting to her new life in a wheelchair.

Told me Wendell helped her find hope sprinkled with laughter.

Think about the post you almost didn’t publish because it seemed too small. The chapter you wrote on a hard day when the prose felt flat and serviceable and nothing special. The offhand comment in a reply that you don’t even remember making.

Someone built something on top of one of those.

You just don’t have the receipt.

The Permission This Gives You

If your ordinary is already landing.

If the ripples are already moving, whether you can see them or not, then the pressure changes.

You don’t have to manufacture significance.

You don’t have to wait until the work is impressive enough to matter.

You don’t have to build the audience to a certain size before the thing you’re making counts.

It’s already counting.

Right now.

In a room you can’t see.

That doesn’t mean stop trying to grow.

It means stop using smallness as an excuse to hold back.

The reader who needs what you have isn’t waiting for you to go viral. They’re just waiting for you to show up.

So show up.

Write the ordinary thing.

Publish the imperfect thing.

Send the email on the week when you’re not sure it’s good enough.

Someone’s light is waiting on the other end of it.

...and you’ll probably never know their name.

“Somebody’s Light” is Track 4 on the Gear Girls album Wide Open. This article is part of a ten-piece series built around lines from the album.

Have a listen: SOMEBODY’S LIGHT

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Share Life of Fiction — Jaime Buckley’s Wanted Hero Universe

Zero internet.

That’s okay. Here’s the video. Uploading from my phone…and i will fix all the details after the fact when Xfinity decides to do their job.

So sorry Ann, I wont be able to join you this morning for the writing sprint…but hopefully Wednesday!

You all have a great day, a better week…and remember:

You are MORE than you THINK you are!

Jaime

When the Gem awakens to call a Hero, the world is ill prepared...and its fate is placed in the hands of a 17 year old boy, named Wendell. 

Some will say this is nothing but a tale of fiction.
Let them think as they may. 

After all...I can't fix stupid.

Previously: Two of the smartest gnomes in Clockworks City find the answer to their most important questions…

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Chapter 92

“Hello?” I called out among the trees.

Heavy branches swayed in the cool spring breeze. I wasn’t entirely sure how I knew it was springtime, but I did. The sweet scent of fresh growing grass peeking up from the soil, new buds on trees, it all spoke new life to me. Even the light blue glow of the twin moons overhead gave me comfort.

There I was, standing out in the open.

No chains. No gnomes. No more pain.

But…how did I get...?

I placed a hand on my side.

The wound, where Noah’s whip had torn my flesh...the mägoweave was whole once more. Holding my breath, I pressed in firmly with my fingers, ready to flinch.

Nothing.

I pushed again, harder this time, but there was no pain.

Thank goodness.

The smiley, its bright yellow face practically glowing on the front of my shirt, was frozen in a content expression, completely inanimate.

Weird.

The sound of crickets tickled my senses. It was something I hadn’t heard in months. You just don’t hear those sounds of nature in Clockworks City, and I hadn’t realized I’d missed the sensation. I walked to the edge of tree line and looked up.

Nothing about this area looked familiar.

I laughed.

Like you’d be able to tell where you are! Dork.

The sky was clear, the moons high. I could even see the flower formation of lights on Iskäri-Käläm. Erimuri was alive and bright tonight.

I grinned.

So the question was: how had I arrived at…wherever this was?

I noticed a glow in the distance. Walking up a little ridge, yellow lights flickered down the hillside.

A town? Village maybe? I didn’t actually care, so long as it wasn’t ablaze or deserted.

“Well, you’ll never know unless you start walking, Wendell,” I said aloud.

Shifting among the rocks, careful with my footing, I started my way down, focusing on the lights of the dwellings.

It was then that I noticed.

The mountains seemed so large and intimidating, now that I’d left the protection of the forest. Giant formations jutting up from the ground, tops covered in snow…glistening in the moonlight. The curtain of trees in front disguised the base of the mountains...like black fingers trying to claw at the sky.

An animal howled in the distance.

“Okay Wendell, we are walking,” Doubt gulped.

Good idea.

Walking fast and focused, going toWARDS the light sounded wise to me. My feet moved quickly, but I restrained myself from a full-fledged sprint. I mean, the last thing I wanted was to be noticed by a would-be predator, right?

Right. Of course.

It could be…hungry…on the hunt for human fast food.

Another howl.

I’d read an article once that intermittent sprinting was a very healthy exercise. Being healthy was a good choice…and I wanted to make good choices.

How did I get here?

“Just keep sprinting,” Doubt gulped.

I know, but…the last thing I remembered was being chained to a stone alter. If I was right, somewhere in the Church or temple of TGII.

“What does that matter right now?”

There was no real way to tell. I hadn’t seen anything until I awoke in that bad position, and even worse situation. It only got worse once Noah showed up. Were my friends looking for me?

My friends.

I swallowed as the third howl ripped through the silence of the night. This time it was close.

Too close.

What good was intermittently exercising, anyway? Tough guys go all out and push themselves, right?

“Yes!”

I could see the buildings better now. Fields of what looked like corn and other plants were growing tall, with barns in the distance. Lanterns ablaze outside small homes.

Shadows moved.

…and my heart skipped a beat.

“Horses,” coughed Doubt. “We’re okay.”

A dozen homes, maybe, scattered about. The rest of the landscape was fields, prairies and scattered clumps of trees.

It looked like any farm you might see back home on Earth.

Another howl.

…followed by a distant growl.

Not distant enough.

“Crap. Crap. Crap!” Doubt squealed. “You gotta R—*”

My legs took off with a life of their own.

Trying to suck in air, sweat started beading across my forehead.

Looking over my shoulder again, one of my heels landed on the edge of a flat stone. The moisture caused me to slip, throwing me off balance. I couldn’t catch myself…and tumbled forward with a grunt.

I hit the ground.

Hard.

“Argh!” I cried out. Rolling onto my back, I grabbed at my leg.

“We’re on the run and you have to go and wound your ankle?!” Doubt snapped.

The world around me seemed to hold its breath.

For several long moments I bit my lip to keep silent, trying hard to blend into the nothing that was silence.

“Get up Wendell…time to move it!”

That silence was broken by a faint hissing sound.

Scanning the ridge, there was nothing to see. Just open space at the end of the sloping hill.

Again I heard the hiss.

“Come on,” Doubt panicked, “Move it!”

Not knowing where to go or what to do, I ducked my head and tried to curl my body to mimic a stone. Wolves...or whatever beast was howling, was far scarier than a hissing snake.

...as long as it was a small snake.

“What are you DOING?!??” Doubt panicked. “Don’t mimic rocks…mimic a bird and FLY!”

Ithari pulsed through bone and muscle. Already the pain in my ankle was subsiding and I could feel the warmth washing over skin.

Would it be enough?

“Let’s find OUT!”

The farms were still a ways off…much too far to make a dash with a wounded ankle.

“So what now, genius? You don’t even know where you are...or what that thing is out…”

Hssssss. Skkrrrrrr. Skkrrrrrr. Skkrrrrrr.

It sounded like…scraping. Something large, being dragged over gravel.

Hssssss.

Crap. Crap. CRAP! Hands shaking, I held my breath. Of course it’s a huge snake! Why would it not be? I’m out here, in the middle of nowhere, all by myself, so why wouldn’t there be something big, nasty and dangerous to EAT MY FACE!??

“You know it won’t eat our face, right? IT’S GONNA SWALLOW US WHOLE!”

Not helping!

Hssssss. Skkrrrrrr. Skkrrrrrr. Skkrrrrrr.

I clenched my eyes tight. Stay calm, Wendell. Keep...calm.

This is where I would probably wet myself.

If I wasn’t such a hardcore tough guy, that is.

“No worries,” Doubt whimpered, “I did it for us.”

I wanted to breathe. I needed to breathe, but fear of being found kept my mouth closed.

Skkrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

My eyes wide, they darted back and forth, searching the shadows around me without moving my head.

I’m a rock. BE a rock.

Please go away.

Please...

I’m not even chewy!

Just skin and bones….all gristle.

I regretted all those late nights watching horror movies mom never wanted in the house. Stupid teenagers screaming and dying because they wouldn’t listen to adults. I didn’t want to be an animal pop tart.

Hssssss.

A howl in the distance cut through the night.

Hssst.

Skkrrrt. Skkrrrt. Skkrrrt. Skkrrrt. Skkrrrt. Skkrrrt.

The movements were fast and loud.

Please. Please. Please, I trembled. Don’t eat me. I don’t taste good. There has to be a nice fat...

Then I saw it.

Long shadows stretched out across the ground, fed by the moons light. Dark shapes…rising across my shoulder.

It was not a snake.

Tattered and worn, the creature dragged itself across the rocks and grass. The contours didn’t follow any recognizable form I knew, but one thing looked certain...the beast had been in a fight. Its skin, which hung loosely from its body, looked flayed. Both arms, back and belly were rent like fabric, long fibers hanging from the front.

I couldn’t help but stare as the shadow swayed, slithering away from my position and dragging its mass over the open ground. At the same time, curiosity didn’t take place of the gratitude I felt. My position had gone unnoticed.

Wendell, the rock, Dipmier was still alive.

The pain in my ankle was all but gone now, which meant I had a choice: remain on the ground, out in the open...or sprint for the homes in the distance.

Running away held a special allure to me at the moment.

The creature was still moving away and would soon reach the distant edge of the forest. Once it was out of site, I could make a dash for the lights in the distance.

The bright sign of hope.

I wondered, then, if the people who lived there would know what I’d just seen?

I stared at the slithering shadow.

Keep going, you ugly, that’s it.

One. Two. THREE!

Pushing up to my knees, I grinned. “See ya suck...”

HSSSST!

Poised silently off to my left was another creature.

It…wasn’t a wounded animal.

It was worse.

I gasped for breath, unable to inhale as I stared into the hood of my nightmares.

The empty hood.

“Jussst a boy. Jussst a CHILD.”

Trembling, my feet shuffled backwards. “No,” I choked, “You’re not real. You’re just,” but I couldn’t finish the statement.

It was swayed in front of me…the robe of charcoal blackness. Hollow, vacant holes where a face should be. Shredded sleeves in place of hands of flesh, reaching out.

“Closer child. Let ussss end your pain.”

Like a specter, it moved slowly towards me, crawling, prowling along, pausing only to stand upright. It towered over me, arms outstretched, fingers…or the cloth in their place, curled inward. The words projected into my mind chilled me to the bone.

“You made your choice, boy.”

“NO!” I screamed, my senses returning.

The robe lunged.

…but not before I arched wide, sidestepping to avoid the first attack. The swipe from fleshless claws raked air as I became a blur of motion.

Nerds do have a super power. One those of us from public school have perfected to survive bully encounters.

It’s called: FLEE

Without looking back, I took off.

There was only one place to go.

The village.

I had to warn them. .

No. My brows dropped forward.

I have to protect them.

I’d accepted this responsibility. Did it in front of others...in front of the Iskari High Council.

But I’d not accepted it for myself…for my own personal reasons.

Evan was the real hero. I knew that now. He was the one everyone actually wanted. Who Dax was there to retrieve. But they ended up with me instead.

It was time to accept that fact once and for all.

Exerting all the strength I had, I put serious distance between myself and the robe. The hissing sound faded into the background of the crickets.

“If I’m not the hero,” I huffed out loud as I sprinted, “then it’s time I learn how to be one!”

Tha-THUMP-THUMP!

The words felt...good.

Powerful.

The village was close and I had no idea how much time I had before the robes would be upon them. Great, I frowned,…I’m leading the danger right to their doorsteps.

But I would need help.

Hero or not, I couldn’t do this alone.

Not yet.

I had to get everyone’s attention.

“Välo,” I barked, followed by, “Teho!” Light quickly gathered around me, blazing like a beacon, brightening the area. I held the image of my skin, glowing like the noonday sun in my mind.

“Uhhhh, Wendell?”

I hope this doesn’t hurt.

“Teho!” I shouted, again.

Light flared from the Ithari, bursting through the black fibers of my shirt.

HSSSST!

The robe fell back from the light, slowing its pace to a crawl…its arms raised to protect eyes that didn’t exist.

“HEY!” I bellowed, “WAKE UP! EVERYONE UP! YOUR VILLAGE IS UNDER ATTACK!” It wasn’t the accurate truth, but there wasn’t any time to explain. “TO ARMS!” I cried, “TO ARMS! TO ARMS!!”

I didn’t stop running until I’d reached the nearest hovel. My momentum was so great, I slammed into the front door with a loud bang.

“Who is it?” called a trembling voice from inside.

“My name is Wendell,” I replied, banging on the heavy wood with my fist. “Your village is about to be attacked by...,” I had no idea what to say. No idea what to call the things chasing me. “Demons,” was the only word that came to mind. “Open up, we need to warn everyone!”

But the door remained closed.

“Did you hear me?” I shouted again, “You’re under attack!” I glanced into the front window, but drapes covered every inch. I couldn’t see a thing.

“I heard you,” replied the voice warily, “and it is night! No torch burns that bright which means either you be the problem...or you have magic with you. If you have magic...then it is you who be the problem!”

“What?” I gasped, “Are you serious? I’m trying to warn you! So what if I’m using magic?!” It had never occurred to me that people might not be accepting when it came to magic. I’d naturally assumed that what I’d seen over the past few months was the norm? Had I been wrong? I shook the thought from my mind. There wasn’t time, and it didn’t matter right now. The robe was already at the edge of the village.

Waiting at the edge of my projected light.

The swaying motions at the edge of the light caught my attention. The thing hissed loudly at me.

The light of Ithari dimmed.

“Wait,” I squeaked, “What’s going on?”

In the gloomy distance, two more shadows converged…the faint hissing echo growing louder with each moment.

Not good.

“NOT GOOD!” Doubt concurred.

I flipped back against the door, my confidence quickly waning. “Come ON! Blast you,”I screamed frantically, “I’m trying to help!!”

“Then go away!” the voice yelled, irritated. “Best thing you can do is move along…take your problems with you, I say!”

Ithari’s light waned...and finally vanished from under the black cloth of my t-shirt.

“But there’s danger!” I pleaded.

This wasn’t working.

“People are going to get hurt, blast you! Why won’t you listen to me?” The back of my skull rested against the wood surface of the door. “Before it’s too late.”

“That’s why I’m in here and you’re still out there,” the voice chided, “You made your choice, boy.”

I lifted my head and turned sharply, eyes fixed on the door. “What...did you say?”

“I said,” repeated the voice, “you made your choice, boy!”

Flinging the door wide, the robe lunged out at me.

With a shriek, my head flipped upright, torso tugging against the chains. Like the waves of the sea, a powerful coldness washed over me, causing my body to shake violently.

“Easy there,” whispered the old gnome. He knelt at the edge of the candles, watching carefully. “It was just a dream.”

Blinking groggily, I tried to swallow.

I felt so…drained...my throat dry. The coldness had taken over bone and muscle. “W-where...” I muttered.

“You’re still here, with us,” the gnome whispered. “Noah’s gone, but he’ll be back.”

A dull ache throbbed inside my skull. A liquid fog, churning, making it hard to focus. “Why does my head hurt so...much?”

The gnome inched into the light and pointed at me. “It’s the crown of dreams,” he said. “The walls you naturally build in your mind are whittled away.”

Swallowing, “Why?” I flexed my fingers, but I couldn’t feel them.

“Because it weakens your defenses. Noah’s after information. By jumbling it about in your consciousness, it’ll be easier to take.”

I grit my teeth. “So...cold. Don’t understand why...it’s so very cold.”

Glancing over at his sleeping friend, the gnome inched closer to the ring of candles. Leaning on one hand, he reached out and grabbed the flame of a candle. The wick went out.

Smiling to himself, he rocked back onto his knees and opened his palm.

Hovering over the center of his hand, was the open flame.

“Hold perfectly still, Mr. Dipmier,” he whispered.

“Call...me Wendell.”

Closing his eyes, the gnome mouthed words in silence. Surrounding me, the remaining candles swayed…each flame leaning in an invisible wind towards the gnome. The flame in his palm intensified, turning in on itself, rolling in place. Yellow fire turned white, but it didn’t stop there. Within moments, he held a near transparent ball of heat.

Lifting his hand to his lips, the gnome blew in my direction.

Like the fragile pieces of a dandelion, the sphere of heat swirled and drifted up and around, floating over the ring of candles and down towards my shaking body. Skimming along the surface of my back, it drifted over the mägoweave, up and over my head, then, splitting in half, rolled down both arms to the shackles.

With a resounding pop, the effects were instantaneous.

Color surged into my flesh as the magical cloth and the Ithari worked together, warming my skin, bone and blood.

With a single breath, I sighed relief.

“Thank you,” I gasped, lifting my head to look at my savior.

The gnome shrugged. “Tabbermain...and I’m afraid it won’t last. Oh, don’t worry,” he added, “the shackles won’t be able to work as well, but this warmth will only last an hour or so. I suggest you gather your strength.”

I nodded. “Thank you Tabbermain.” I curled my fists. “Can you get these things off me?”

He shook his head. “Sorry. We made them too well.”

I blinked. “You...made these shackles?”

“The shackles, chains, even enchanted the door to get out. The three of us did,” he said, nodding to the sleeping gnomes. “Didn’t have much choice.”

I grunted. “We always have a choice.”

“Do you have children?” Tabbermain asked pointedly.

“What?”

“Children. I asked if you have any children, Wendell?”

“No, I don’t.”

The kind face turned stern. “Well we do. All of us. Grandchildren too. So until you have tiny lives depending on you for their survival, don’t tell me about choices.”

“Right,” I said. Then softer, “That was very inconsiderate of me. I’m sorry.” Then, “Thank you for the help.”

The old gnome collapsed back into the straw and leaned against the stone wall. “Just don’t mention it to these two. They’re likely to be irked that I went against Noah’s plans.” Averting his gaze, Tabbermain picked out strands of straw and broke them into pieces. “He’s a wicked-cruel gnome, that one is. Not right in the head.”

I stretched, rolling my shoulders, and flinched. “Ouch.” The warmth of Ithari pulsed through my skin, numbing some of the pain from the wounds, but it still hurt. “I should have healed,” I whispered.

“Another aspect of the artifacts he’s using. The chains prevent you from using magic, especially healing. The whip manifests a poison that attacks healing magic.” Leaning forward, Tabbermain cocked his head to one side. “Is it true? You’re the Gnolaum? As in...you have the gem...in your chest?”

I nodded. “Drilled herself right through my ribcage.”

The gnome’s ears wiggled as bushy eyebrows popped up. “You’re not serious!”

“Oh, I am very serious. Hurt worse than...well, let me put it to you this way: This job is to die for.”

You were not dead, Wendell.

The tingle in my chest made me smile. “Well...almost, anyway.”

“Wow,” gasped Tabbermain, “I don’t think that would be an experience I’d want to have, myself.”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly something I got to choo....,” I paused. “Never mind.”

“He won’t stop, you know.” The look was one of resignation. “Noah.”

I pulled at the shackles, trying to lower my head towards my hands. If I could just pull the ringlet off my head.

Grrrr.

It was no use. The chains held me firmly in place, arms outstretched.

Blast.

“What does he want so badly that he’d hurt his own people?” I asked.

Tabbermain remained silent.

I stopped struggling and stared at the gnome. “You know, don’t you?”

“Don’t you tell him a thing.”

Tabbermain shifted away from his waking friend. “I didn’t.”

“Tell me what?” I prodded.

“That if we don’t kick yer hide off the island, you’ll ruin life for everybody,” replied the third gnome.

“Doddle!”

Tabbermain sighed. “It’s too late, Vin.”

“No it’s not,” replied Doddle innocently, completely ignoring my presence. “That’s what we’re not supposed to tell him, right? So don’t tell him that! I’ll make up something. Something extra clever...like,” he looked about the cell as if he’d lost something. “Ooo! Ooo! I know!” He adjusted his thick glasses and trained his goofy grin on me. “Would you believe us if we said you were an alien, from another planet? That you got kidnapped and this was, in fact, just a really bad dream?”

I bit my lip. “Actually, I just might be willing to believe something like that.”

Doddle giggled and clapped his hands wildly like a three year old. Beaming back at his fellow gnomes, he shouted, excited. “See?! We’ll just tell him that!”

With a loud moan, Vin rolled over into the straw and went back to sleep.

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“I said two turns, Telly, not three!” Freak yelped, ducking just before a spring-loaded arm snapped out of a socket and flattened a crate of safety helmets.

“We’re building a death machine, not a percussion instrument!”

Telly’s voice echoed from beneath a console. “But it sounded like a banjo—worth it!”

The S.L.A.G., Gnolaum, loomed in the middle of the chaos like a sleeping giant with a really good dental plan. Its jet-black plating gleamed under the overhead lamps, with the iconic smiley face across its chest grinning wide and completely deranged.

Inside the cockpit, Wendell sat strapped in, flipping switches and tapping the console.

“Uh…Freak?” his voice crackled through the comms. “The panel just blinked at me and made a ‘boing’ noise. Was that supposed to happen?”

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Nobody Is Coming With the Green Light

Let me ask you something.

What are you waiting for?

Not in a motivational-poster kind of way. I mean actually...what is the specific thing?

Because most writers I’ve talked to…and I’ve talked to a lot of them…aren’t waiting for talent.

They already have that.
They’re not waiting for time.
They could find twenty minutes if they really had to.
They’re waiting for permission.

Permission to call themselves a writer.
Permission to publish before they’re “ready.”
Permission to take up space in a genre that already has people in it who seem more qualified, more polished, more...whatever the thing is they think they’re not yet.

I keep asking myself…WHY?

Nobody is coming with that permission.

There is no committee.

There is no moment when the world looks at you and says, “Yes. Now. You may proceed.”

Back in 2000, I was waiting for my ‘big break’ to become a comic book creator with Marvel, or DC, or Image comics. I’d submitted my work and got very polite rejections, and yet something in me said, “But I’m SUPPOSED to do this!”

They ‘had’ to notice me…or I would never have the opportunity to become a comic book creator.

…or so I thought.

That’s when my dad,…my real life hero, came to me in 2004 and said, “You know son, there’s this amazing thing called the internet, and I think it’s here to stay. Through it, you’d have access to the whole world over time, so why not do your Wanted Hero comic book solo?”

That’s when it clicked.

WHY was I waiting?

The Thing About the Door

I spent years working up to things.

Almost published.
Almost launched.
Almost finished.
Almost started.

I had reasons.

Good ones…or at least I THOUGHT they we good ones.

The world was genuinely hard and the timing genuinely wasn’t right and there were genuinely other things I had to handle first.

Some of that was real.

But some of it... some of it was just the comfortable feeling of almost. Almost means you’re still in the game without actually having to play. Almost means you can’t fail yet. Almost is a place you can live for a long time if you’re not careful.

The door was there the whole time.

I kept walking past it.

Not because I didn’t see it. Because stepping through it meant I couldn’t blame the door anymore.

What “Ready” Actually Means

Here’s the thing about waiting until you’re ready.

Ready is not a destination.

It’s a story you tell yourself to explain why today isn’t the day.

I know writers who have been getting ready for eleven years.

Beautiful outlines.
Detailed world maps.
Character sheets with backstories going back four generations.

Everything in place.
Everything except the actual writing.

Because the actual writing is where the permission thing gets real. You can prepare in private. But writing... publishing... putting the thing into the world... that requires you to decide you’re allowed to.

Nope. Let me put that differently.

It requires you to decide you don’t need to be allowed.

That’s the shift.

Not confidence…you don’t need to feel confident.

Not certainty…the uncertainty never fully goes away.

Just the decision that you are going to begin without waiting for the signal that was never coming anyway.

I have a good friend…brilliant writer with solid talent…who finally got fed up with waiting on the ‘right’ time or the ‘right’ opportunity to complete a novel. In fact, he got so sick of trying to find an agent and waiting on some ‘professional’ gatekeeper to tell him what to do, he didn’t complete a book…he wrote a trilogy.

The only thing he regretted, was waiting so long to get his writing butt in gear.

The Cost of Waiting

Every day you wait has a price tag. Most people don’t look at it.

The story you don’t write this year doesn’t just...wait around for you.

It changes.

You change.

The version of that story you could tell today is different from the one you’ll tell in three years…and not always in the direction you’d hope.

Some stories need to be told when the wound is fresh. Some characters only speak when you’re in the right season of your own life to hear them. The waiting doesn’t preserve the material.

Sometimes it just lets it go stale.

And the readers... the ones who would have found something in your work... they’re out there right now reading something else. Not because your thing isn’t worth finding. Because you haven’t put it where they can find it.

That’s not a guilt trip. That’s just math.

What Beginning Actually Looks Like

It’s not dramatic.

No one writes a first chapter and hears trumpets. You sit down, you open the document, and you write a sentence. Probably a bad one.

That’s fine.

Bad first sentences have launched more good books than any amount of waiting ever did.

The beginning doesn’t feel like a beginning while it’s happening.

It feels like Tuesday.
It feels like thirty minutes you carved out while the coffee was still hot.
It feels like uncertainty and a blinking cursor and the distinct possibility that this might not work.

Do it anyway.

Because here is the only thing I know for certain after however many years of doing this:

The writers who have work in the world are not the ones who waited until they were sure. They’re the ones who started before they were.

What the hell are you waiting for?

I’m saying that because you NEED to hear this!

No one has to give you permission to write, to finish, to publish, to share with readers around the whole flippin’ world!

YOU get to decide.
YOU get to choose how and where and when you create, from start to finish.

That also means the ONLY one holding you back…is you.

In the end, when you look in the mirror with regret, you’ll only have yourself to blame.

The Only Permission That Was Ever Real

You want to know where that permission comes from?

You.

It was always you. The whole time, the only signature that ever mattered on the green light was yours.

Nobody can give you what you won’t give yourself. And nobody can take it from you once you do.

So here’s what I want you to do.

Not tomorrow.
Today, before you close this tab.

Write one sentence.

Doesn’t matter if it’s good.
Doesn’t matter if it’s the beginning or the middle or a scene you’re not sure belongs anywhere yet. One sentence, in the document, today.

That’s the beginning.
That’s what it looks like.

...and once you start, you might be surprised how hard it is to stop.

This is one piece of a larger content bridge built around the Gear Girls album Wide Open. The song “Wide Open” explores the same theme…the moment you stop waiting for a door to be opened and realize you’ve been standing next to the handle the whole time.

Have a listen: WIDE OPEN

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Share Life of Fiction — Jaime Buckley’s Wanted Hero Universe

Seriously…I got nothing.

Sorry about that. Not what to do…because I did all I could all week long and everything wanted to rebel.

Right.

Okay, so that was a thing.
Survived, yes, but wow it was a challenging week.

That’s it.

The rest you can listen to in the video….

Oh. …and here’s your treat today:

Just right click and “Save image as” to your desktop and use it from there.

Have a great week.

You are MORE than you THINK you are!

Until Next Time,

Jaime *refuse-to-give-up* Buckley

P.S. — If you’re a writer and you’re new here, check the links below. Anne from Tell Me a Mystery runs a weekly writing stream where we hang out, visit for an hour, and do writing sprints. It’s low-key and it’s good.

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LoF 'Daily Use& Saving Up For' List

Remember:

MONDAY & WEDNESDAY mornings at 9am Pacific, ’s Ann Kimbrough, will encourage you, make you smile, and give you that much-needed nudge to accomplish your weekly writing progress!!

Join The Sprint!

When the Gem awakens to call a Hero, the world is ill prepared...and its fate is placed in the hands of a 17 year old boy, named Wendell. 

Some will say this is nothing but a tale of fiction.
Let them think as they may. 

After all...I can't fix stupid.

Previously: While Chuck puts his plan into motion, President Stump confronts Ian, while Wendell gets his first taste of Father Noah’s personal attention.

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Chapter 91

Morty sighed heavily, his shoulder slumping forward as his forehead rested against the warm metal cylinder of the PROMIS.

For several minutes he kept his eyes closed, concentrating on the lowering hum of the machine powering down.

There had to be a solution to this.

An entire lifetime had been spent in this specific pursuit.

Was this so bad...wanting to follow in the footsteps of his own father? A gnome who desired to become a tinkerer among the most intelligent race of the planet? Morty had exceeded his father’s expectation growing up, latching on to the desires, hopes and dreams of his parent...and translating them into success. In school he was always at the head of the class. In University, he astounded the professors with his comprehension of math, energy manipulation and mechanical engineering...

All the skills and more, that Morty would need to complete this one task. To create a perpetual energy source for the gnomes of Clockworks.

“Where did I go wrong?” he whispered to himself. Lifting his head ever so slightly, he thudded it against the metal. “Where did I fail?”

The stressful statement was followed by a warm and lingering kiss on his cheek.

“You, my love, have not failed.” Deloris’ soft finger combed through his white, wiry hair jutting out from behind gigantic ears. “You have discovered another way this will not work. So scratch it off the list and lets get ready for the next test.”

“But I was so close,” he replied, “I was convinced that I was at the finishing end.”

She grabbed him by the shoulders and gently pulled him away from the PROMIS. Cupping his cheeks in her hands, she smiled sweetly. “You are close. Closer than you have ever been. So don’t give up now, when you have worked all your life for success. Cross this off the list and use what we’ve learned.”

How did she do that?

No matter how down Morty felt, Deloris had the ability to pull him out of the darkness. Shine a light on the here and now and provide a perspective. She didn’t carry him. She never carried him. He didn’t need that. No tinkerer wanted someone else to do the work for them...that was the whole point of being an inventor in the first place. No, what he needed was another view point. Something to clear his senses and if needed, to lock onto and use for himself. She uplifted, encouraged and prodded him...but never carried him.

“You’re an amazing girl,” he whispered, the gratitude sparkling in his eyes, “you know that, right?”

“And brilliant,” she added with a smirk, “for marrying such a cute and inspired tinkerer.”

He chuckled. “Looks like I’m one lucky guy.”

She started giggling, looking around at the scorch marks on the walls. “Especially since I never married you for your money.”

They both laughed.

“Right,” Morty beamed, clapping his hands together and rubbing them vigorously, “let’s work this out.”

Undoing the container locks, he yanked and pulled on the handle until the battery tray came dislodged. Foam bubbled over the connectors, where the cables had melted clean away.

“Not the batteries too?!” he growled in frustration. Three high voltage units sat completely fused to the tray. The tops of each battery were cracked open, the acid within drained. “It’s worse than I thought.” Snatching his insulated gloves, he dropped to his knees and reached into the tray’s compartment. Wiping his hand along the baseboard, he inspected his fingers. He frowned. “That’s...not right.”

“What is it?”

Using his elbow to get upright, he held his fingers in front of him. “There’s no acid. The compartment is dry.”

Deloris mimicked his frown. “Shouldn’t there be acid all over? If the batteries broke open, everything should be wet. Shouldn’t it?”

“Exactly. I should have pitted metal or even holes, but dry?” He glanced back at the tray. “The batteries didn’t explode.” Curious, he knelt by the tray, pulled a glove from his hand and held his palm over the open tops of the batteries still bubbling. “It’s cold.”

Deloris snorted. “This isn’t making any sense. A melted battery would come from acid or heat. Since it’s built to contain the acid, that’s not likely, so that leaves heat.”

“Feel this!”

She knelt at his side and held her palm over a battery. “It’s...”

“Cold.”

Puzzled she looked to her husband. He was grinning from ear to ear. “What?”

“I’m not sure if I’m right,” he whispered.

“Yes you do,” she smirked, “you always get that look when you know you’re right, but you want to prove it to yourself, just to make sure. What is it?”

Morty put the second glove back on his hand and unlocked the tray, pulling it completely free from the PROMIS. “These batteries were used up. The shard doesn’t create electricity...and that’s what these batteries are made to absorb and store. But I tested this in smaller quantities...so I know the energy is similar. When the PROMIS was turned on, it multiplies the energy present...which means we had too much of what it couldn’t store.”

Deloris looked at him and smiled awkwardly. “Okayyyy? ...and that means, what exactly?”

Morty beamed. “It means I didn’t fail.” Lifting the tray, he virtually bounced to his work bench, setting the batteries down and yanking the gloves off his hands. “That means this energy is more potent than I thought and we need to do a few other tests, quickly.”

“Don’t we need to create a new type of battery? Something that will hold the charge?”

He shook his head. “This is about changing the way we look at energy altogether. The Lanthya Shard is alive. It emits a bio-electrical pulse, or bioelectromagnetism.” Popping open a few of his cabinet doors, nimble fingers shuffled through charts, books and papers. “The same kind of energy produced by living cells, tissues and organisms.”

“But that doesn’t make sense, Morty...that’s a stone, not tissue.”

“If I’m right...that’s where the thinking has to change!” Tugging on an old, brown book with a torn spine, he pulled it free and set it on the bench. Flipping quickly to the back of the book, he scanned the index. “I’m not saying I know what’s going on, Deloris, but I have a hunch here...and it’s been a while since I’ve had a good hunch.”

She walked behind him, giving his shoulder a light, supportive squeeze.

“I think this has something to do with voltage-gated ion channels.”

She chuckled. “Ok, now you lost me.”

“Think about bioelectronics...”

“The synergy between electronics and biology?”

He nodded. “We use forms of it in cybernetics all the time. Look at Höbin in the next room...he functions perfectly using that technology every day. The devices use a combination of power cells and his own biological energy created by his cells to function. Even if his batteries drained completely, his own body, if given enough time, would replenish the batteries.”

“But the device usage would drain the batteries faster than his body could replenish them,” she countered.

“Right...but that’s where the Shard is different! It creates too much bio-energy for the batteries to store. It’s meant to be used, to constantly be in flux, not tucked away.” He flipped the pages, shrugging. “At least that’s my hunch, anyway.”

“I’ve been thinking about babies.”

Tapping the chapter heading, “I don’t think they can be used as batteries...,” he froze. “Wait,” turning to face Deloris, “did you just say...”

“Babies.”

“Yeah, did you just say that?”

She nodded. Blinking her long lashes, she searched his face. He looked stunned. Lost even. It wasn’t something she’d talked about with him for too long. The thought of having a child, of having their family expand was beginning to ache in her chest.

He blinked. Then again, his mouth still open in what she guessed was shock.

“But...”

“I know,” she whispered, looking away, “It’s too late to actually have a child. I mean, I’m too old to have a child. Thought my career was always so important...”

“Hey,” he cut in, shifting closer and turning her chin to face him. His smile was warm and comforting, his touch soft. “None of that, young lady. We both made our choices according to where we were and what we knew.”

“But you always wanted to have children.”

He grinned, tapping the end of her nose with the tip of his finger. “I still do. But my first priority was to be a supportive husband.” His face flushed, “And though I think it would have gone better if you didn’t think I was insane half the time, I did the best I knew how...and I’m proud of you.”

She chuckled, recalling so many arguments over the invisible wizard and his troll side kick. Chuck and Dax were most certainly real...but Morty had endured her doubts and accusations for years.

“Seriously Deloris...I’m glad we made those decisions, because you have helped a lot of people. Men, women, children, communities. Think of the technology you helped develop...that if nothing else, brought the Gnolaum back to this world!”

She hadn’t thought about that. What would have happened if that technology...having the ability to go into the very thoughts of another by linking... “That’s it!” she burst out. “You darling little gnome, you figured it all out!”

Bushy eyebrows folded forward. “I what? You found out a way to have a baby?”

“No!” She laughed. “You said we had to find a different way of thinking about energy, right?”

“Well yes, but...”

“Well what if it’s not us that has to change? What if, instead of all the devices having to be altered, such as batteries to take a charge from the Shard...there was a way to change the way the Shard thought about the devices?”

“Hmmmm,” Morty said thoughtfully.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“I think,” he looked at her seriously, then winked, “that we can always adopt.”

Nestled quietly in the next room, Höbin had reached his own plateau. Even connected to the exclusive records and internal database of the FAF, he found himself falling short of his professional expectations.

“You’re losing your touch, old man,” he chided himself. “If this were an intellectual fight for the world title, you would have been knocked out by now!” With a huff and a flick of his metallic wrist, the names book flipped off the desk and slid across the cement floor.

“Author of thirty two books, winner of every major researcher and field award, the only gnome granted access to the libraries of the evolu, kutollum and human realms...” he took a deep breath, “ AND a member of the Fishis Hall of Fame!” He slumped back into the leather chair. “Yet you can’t find the simple answer to who was the greatest tinkerer of your own people? Bah.”

He yawned and stretched his arms high over his head.

“You’re getting old, too,” he mumbled.

But he knew it wasn’t actually his research skill, so much as his open frustration with the genetic gnome habit of exaggeration. That was the key. No matter where Höbin looked, regardless of the records, every tinkerer...backed by their specific guilds...touted and hyper-promoted their success. Every inventor was talked about as if they were the best. But not everyone could be the best. So how did he sort it all out.

Dropping his face into his hands, he yawned again.

“Höbin!” Morty cried, flinging open the door and startling the old historian.

Morty stopped short. “Ooo, sorry about that. Didn’t mean to scare you, but I could use your help!”

“What’s up?” Höbin tried to smile. What he really wanted to do was find some of the less desirable characters from the Black Market and taser them. It always made him smile to taser a truly nasty individual. Someone who deserved to be put in their place.

“Do you have access to more than just the FAF database?”

“Sure do. DMV, IRS, BBD, AAWLI. All the major systems, why?”

“BBD? AAWLI?”

“Book Binding Division and Animal And Wildlife Library Index. Good information sites, trust me.”

The tinkerer shrugged. “If you say so. But do you have access to the Patent Office? I want to see if there’s anyone with some extra-ordinary designs for transformers.”

Höbin sat up and pulled the laptop forward. “Let me check.” A few clicks of the buttons, and...” He stopped typing. “Patent Office.”

Morty nodded, “That’s what I said.”

“No, no!” Höbin beamed, clicking away on the keyboard faster than ever. “That’s the answer I needed, stupid fool that I am! I’ve been stuck trying to sift through who the top tinkerers actually were, but I get stuck. Gnomes brag like old women at baking competitions. But what happens when someone actually invents something accepted and used by Clockworks?”

Morty snorted, “They create a patent for it, of course.”

“Exactly. So what I need to do is take these names and cross reference them with the Patent Index and...” His laptop beeped back at him, flashing the list of results on the screen. “...I get a list of possible family lines to choose from.”

Deloris walked through the door. “Did it work?”

“Haven’t gotten to it yet,” Morty replied without looking up. “I think Höbin may have found his own answers about the seal.”

The historian grinned. “And there he is. The most famous of all tinkerers.”

“Really?” Morty beamed. “What did he invent? What’s his name?”

Höbin glanced up, perplexed. “I can see why I had to go through all this trouble to get a name, if an accomplished tinkerer like yourself can’t even make a guess.”

“I wouldn’t point fingers,” Morty snorted, “tinkerer’s are more common than historians. Yours is a regulated field, mine isn’t. Anyone with a mind to build something is encouraged. There are no qualifications, regulations or licenses required to start. The Tinkerer’s Guild is a series of guilds within guilds with tens of thousands of members...with hundreds joining and quitting daily.”

Höbin nodded. “Noted. Sorry about that.”

“Apology accepted. So who is he...or she?”

“It’s a famous...family, it looks like. The first member who put the family on the map was Jarus Bucket. He invented the furnaces, the hot water heater and designed the first stage of the generators we’re still using today.”

Morty let a long whistle escape his lips. Glancing at Deloris, “That’s...quite a list.”

She smiled. “Not hard to be amazing when not much has been invented in the first place.”

“Oooo, you’re a harsh judge.”

“Just prejudice, that’s all.” She winked.

Höbin scanned the screen, scrolling down a list. “Looks like his family was famous for a slew of inventions that literally built our way of life. Generation after generation, his descendants remained tinkerers. From the pumping systems and industrial lifts, to synthetic materials, microchips and digital copiers. There has to be more than a hundred inventions here.”

“And they get royalties on all those items?” Deloris asked stunned.

“Only the original tinkerer gets the payout. It doesn’t transfer to the family after the inventor dies, unless they developed the invention as a business. What I’m seeing here are patents for public projects. Most were commissioned by factions.” Höbin clicked a few more buttons. “Yup, paid for by the city counsel.”

“Which means?”

“Which means,” Morty said with a sigh, “that the inventions were paid for in advance, so there wouldn’t be royalties. It was a flat commission to perform.”

Deloris scrunched her nose. “Ouch.”

Morty nodded. “Ouch is right. No one does that anymore. Too many tinkerer’s were taken advantage of. That’s why it’s against Guild policy now. They want their members to be protected.”

Höbin scribbled something on a notepad. “Good enough for me. I have an address to go see them.”

“Go? See them?” Morty choked, “Are you nuts? You’re a wanted gnome, Höbin, or have you completely lost your mind?”

The historian laughed. He pulled a ring from his pocket and held it up in the light. “I thought I had, but you solved that, my friend. With this ring, I’ll be able to travel safely enough I think.” Then, more seriously, “That last seal has to be found, no matter the cost.” He looked at the name and address he’s scribbled down.

“Now I know exactly who to look for.”

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People ask me, fairly often, what I do for a living.

I tell them I write things down. They nod politely and change the subject, which is fine with me. If I told them the whole truth, we’d be there for three days and I’d miss dinner.

The whole truth is this: I work for the Fishis Archive Foundation. I am one of twelve Fishis. I have been doing this job for forty-seven years and I have not, not once, considered doing anything else.

Not seriously, anyway.

There was one afternoon in a collapsed aqueduct in the Outer Reaches where I reconsidered briefly, but that passed once I got my arm working again.

The FAF is not an easy thing to explain to someone who didn’t grow up inside it. So I’m going to try anyway.

Consider this your orientation.

You’re welcome.

What the Fishis Archive Foundation Actually Is

The Fishis Archive Foundation is the central information institution of the gnome people.

I don’t mean that loosely.

I mean: if something happened, if someone existed, if a place was mapped, a treaty was signed, a guild was formed, a king was crowned or quietly removed…the FAF has a record of it. Somewhere in those halls, behind one of approximately six thousand employees and several locked doors, is a document that knows the truth of it.

The FAF collects history. Not the polished version governments prefer, not the entertaining version bards sell, not the vague moral lesson your grandmother summarized over dinner.

History.

Documented, dated, cross-referenced, and filed.

Founded in the years before the Great Clockwork Chime Tower was built…before ChimeTime existed, before the districts had names, before Clockwork City was anything more than a cluster of very stubborn gnomes with an engineering problem and too much ambition…the FAF began as something much simpler.

Record keepers.

Scribes who wrote down what they witnessed because someone had to and nobody else was doing it carefully enough.

Then came the genealogists. Then the archivists. Then the scholars who realized that individual records, when collected together, revealed patterns that no single document could show alone.

Then came the Foundation.

The FAF today operates out of a multi-floor archive in Clockwork City…a building with hundreds of monitors, restricted databases, open plan desks for the staff, and a sub-level that most employees don’t have clearance to know exists. Approximately six thousand gnomes work there that the public knows about.

More than 30,000 more that they don’t.

The institution is exclusive to gnomes. No other race is granted access to the collections, and non-gnomes are not employed in any research or archival capacity. This is not arrogance. It is a matter of institutional integrity that has been debated, challenged, and upheld for longer than some nations have existed.

Access to FAF records is tiered and tightly regulated. What the general public can see is a fraction of what exists. What senior researchers can access is a fraction of what the restricted databases hold. And what sits below the restricted level... I have opinions about that.

I keep them to myself, mostly, because I value what remains of my welcome.

The FAF is nominally affiliated with the Clockwork City government faction. I say nominally because the relationship is complicated in the way that all relationships are complicated when one party has information the other party would very much prefer stayed buried.

The FAF maintains that it is politically neutral by charter.

The government maintains that the FAF is cooperative and grateful.

Both parties understand that this arrangement continues only as long as both find it useful.

I find this quietly hilarious and have written about it exactly nowhere in any official document.

The Problem With Institutions

Here is the thing about any organization large enough to matter: it develops interests of its own.

The FAF is no exception.

Depending on who is running the place at any given time, certain information gets... managed. Reviewed with unusual thoroughness. Filed in locations that require escalating levels of authorization to reach. Occasionally, a document that should exist simply does not appear in any searchable record, and no one in the building seems to know why.

I have personally experienced this three times. Once with a trade record that implicated a senior council member in a fraud scheme spanning forty years. Once with a biological survey of a district that no longer officially exists. And once with my own work, which I will not detail here because I am already on thin enough ice with the current administration.

The FAF collects truth.

What it does with that truth depends entirely on who holds the pen at the top.

This is why the Fishis exist.

The Fishis

We are not administrators.

We are not archivists or cataloguers or reviewers or any of the other thousand job titles the FAF has invented to keep its six thousand employees feeling purposeful. Those are fine people doing necessary work.

They are not us.

There are twelve Fishis in total. We are the field scholars…the ones who go out into the world and bring the record back. The name comes from an old gnomish phrase for those who dive into deep water. The kind of water where the light doesn’t reach and most sensible creatures don’t go.

We go there.

We bring back what we find.

Each Fishi has a specialty. One knows creatures and biology better than anyone alive. One knows political structures and faction mechanics with a precision that would make the government nervous if they thought about it long enough. Others specialize in artifacts, in culture, in geography, in ancient languages, in military history. The eleven of them are extraordinary at what they do. They are the best scholars in the gnome world in their respective fields.

I have no specialty,…and I am the best at what I do.

I am told this makes me unusual.

History, biology, politics, artifacts, culture, language, geography, criminal enterprise, theological structure, and economic systems are known to me. I also hold a doctorate in field analytics and animal linguistics, as well as degrees in arcane analysis, magic fundamentals and advanced cybernetic adaptation and engineering.

I also make a mean quiche and an impressive lemon sorbet.

If it exists and someone needs to know about it accurately, I go and I find out. This is either a gift or a personality defect.

Possibly both.

I’ve stopped investigating the question.

What the twelve of us share: we are all famous. We are all independent. We have no leader and no hierarchy among ourselves. We are, every one of us, colleagues and friends…the kind of friendship that forms between people who understand exactly what the work costs and do it anyway. We have pulled each other out of bad situations on four continents and three occasions I am not legally permitted to describe.

We look to no one above us. We answer to the work.

I am, apparently, the one the others look to most often. Honestly, I find this baffling and have said so repeatedly. They continue doing it anyway.

I’ve given up arguing.

Handlers

Every Fishi has a handler.

This is not optional and it is not ceremonial. A handler is the operational layer between a Fishi and the Foundation…the person who cuts the deals, manages payment, navigates FAF bureaucracy, and delivers assignments to scholars who may be, at any given moment, in a collapsed aqueduct in the Outer Reaches with no forwarding address.

My handler is Damen Umbril.

He is younger than me by a considerable margin, which I find slightly offensive. He operates from a uni-chair, which the people who underestimate him find educational…because Damen has a talent for making problems disappear. I’ve never fully understood this and have never asked him to explain. He is clever, loyal, and has a moral position on the current state of gnome society that aligns closely enough with mine that we have never seriously argued about direction.

Only methodology.

Occasionally volume.

He is the perfect employee for this work. No one looks twice at him. No one expects a man in a uni-chair to be the covert operative managing the FAF’s most controversial field scholar.

This assumption has been deeply useful to both of us.

Our relationship is simple: He finds me the assignments no one else will take. I do them. The FAF gets results they cannot get any other way and pays us accordingly…Damen in credits, me in coin.

I don’t technically exist in the system anymore, but we make it work.

By any reasonable accounting, I’m the FAF’s top producer. They know it. I know it. Damen knows it. My colleagues know it. This knowledge is the quiet foundation of our ongoing arrangement.

The FieldScribe Order

Of the twelve Fishis, we are all members of the FieldScribe Order…one of several guilds operating under the FAF umbrella.

The Order is what distinguishes us from the scholars who stay inside. Archive Scholars organize and cross-reference. Cataloguers verify and classify. FieldScribes go out.

There are not many of us in the Order beyond the twelve senior Fishis. Field documentation is a specialty that attracts a particular kind of person and tends to shorten careers in ways that discourage casual applicants. Those who do join work under senior Fishis as associates, couriers, or research assistants. The Order maintains no permanent headquarters. We are, by definition, wherever the work is.

What we produce goes through the Foundation’s submission process: logged, reviewed, approved, patented. Every document we submit carries the official record: written for the FAF, the district we filed from, submission date in both Sundering and ChimeTime, submission number. When approved, it receives an approval record. When cleared for publication, a patent number…which is the final stamp that makes a document verifiably official, publicly accessible, and protected under FAF institutional authority.

This process exists because the FAF’s entire value rests on one thing: the verifiable integrity of its records.

Anyone can claim a document is official.

A patent number means it actually is.

My work has been submitted, reviewed, and approved many times over. The patent side is occasionally more complicated. I have views on why. The current administration has views on my views.

We manage.

Why This Matters

The FAF is not a library.

Libraries are pleasant places where knowledge sits quietly and waits to be asked for. The FAF is an institution with power, politics, budget pressures, and six thousand+ employees whose livelihoods depend on it continuing to function. It collects truth and it also, depending on the day and the person in charge, decides what to do with that truth.

The FieldScribe Order exists because the work of going out and finding the record cannot be done from inside a building. History does not file itself neatly into searchable databases. It sits in collapsed archives, in the notes of people who died without publishing, in the oral traditions of communities the gnome world has largely forgotten about, in the physical evidence of things that happened before anyone thought to write them down.

Someone has to go get it.

That is what we do.

We go get it.

We bring it back.

We write it down accurately, completely, and without regard for whose version of events it contradicts.

The FAF publishes what it publishes. The record exists regardless.

I have been doing this work for forty-seven years. I have been banned from my home city, paid under the table, worked through handlers, and filed submissions from locations I will not specify in a document with this distribution level.

I would not change any of it.

The work is not glamorous. It is not safe. It is frequently cold, occasionally explosive, and hard on the knees.

It is also the most important thing I know how to do.

So.

Welcome to the Foundation.
Try not to touch anything in the restricted section.

Höbin Luckyfeller is a Senior Fishi and FieldScribe of the Fishis Archive Foundation, District 9, Clockwork City. He is the author of Demoni Vankil, Bloodsticks, and numerous field reports filed under submission numbers the current administration would prefer you not look up. He can be reached through unconventional channels.

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So close.

Soooooooo close, and she is SO done being pregnant.

I’m gonna pretend it doesn’t matter to me and she should just have the baby now.

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When the Gem awakens to call a Hero, the world is ill prepared...and its fate is placed in the hands of a 17 year old boy, named Wendell. 

Some will say this is nothing but a tale of fiction.
Let them think as they may. 

After all...I can't fix stupid.

Previously: Wendell wakes up in a dungeon cell, and in the company of three old gnomes, chained to the wall. He himself is chained to some kind of alter made from stone. It is when Wendell realizes that things are bad, that they get worse…and he meets his captor face to face.

Father Noah.

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Chapter 90

“Is it done?”

“I’d really appreciate it if you’d stop asking me that. This is very delicate work and I’m sure no one wants to get caught...especially me.”

“But you’re always so fast in your clickity-clack world...typing on those buttons and such. You work faster than most of us can talk.”

Nat smiled to himself. It felt good for someone to notice his efforts. Funny thing was, he never thought the old wizard had paid much attention to him in the first place. It gave the compliment more weight. But this was a dangerous task. He’d been asked to hack into government databases, steal funds under the name of the President...and then...

How did the wizard even get Stumps actual finger prints in the first place? The paperwork would be the easy part...a little artwork, a bit of cut and paste and even a novice could fool a government official. Chuck wanted the team to have pardons for the crimes they already committed. Nat’s job now was to take the tools he’d been given and set up a new life for all of them. If done right...this could cover all their tracks. If done wrong, well...

Chucks confidence made him smile again, but Nat made sure not to show it. “This is a bit more complicated than what I’ve done before. It’ll take some time to plant the phony files into the system. Give them a bit of official history.”

“But you can do it?”

He nodded, “I think so, yes.”

Chuck tousled the programmers hair. “Excellent.”

“This is a lot of work you’re expecting us to do in a dangerously short period of time, you know,” complained Freak. The TNT crew, the twins and Lili were all huddled around one of the main tables, looking at schematics of S.L.A.G.s. Buffy stared up at Cryo64, who grinned back at her unabashed. The shop owner shook his head at both of them and refocused, “I’m not sure we can do it.”

Tumbler took a pen and scratched some notes on a pad. “We can, Craig...you know we can...we just need the parts, the tools and a big enough space to work in. We’ve done tougher jobs than this.”

Freak gave him the evil eye.

“Yeah,” Telly added, “where people don’t want to shoot at us would be nice!”

“No one tried to shoot at us,” Lili clarified.

“Maybe not,” he countered, giving the twins a nervous look, “but after what they’ve said on the news, who says the Centurions wont try to?”

Nibbles popped the bubblegum in her mouth, “I’m with Telly. There’s no way I want to stick my neck outside if I don’t have to. But I don’t mind helping out. I like Dax.” She pondered a moment before adding, “We need a place to hide just as much as a place to work.” She sighed loudly, “Too bad this place doesn’t have a work station like the Trench Arena.”

“Ooooo,” grinned Telly, “that would be sweet. A dedicated work bench, lifts...and I miss all the pop they keep in that little fridge, too.”

Freak grumbled and rolled up the schematics, “Doesn’t do any good to wish.”

“No,” Chuck said aloud, his tiny, gnarled fingers combing through his beard, “But I don’t think we have to wish for anything.”

“Oh boy,” cringed Nibbles, shifting uncomfortably in her seat, “I think he’s having another idea.”

They all moaned.

President Stump sat motionless in his wheelchair, the door propped open behind him. Clouds rolled like the waves of the sea, past the windows of his dining area. It was his favorite room, made completely out of transparent materials. He could see all the lights of Clockworks below him, slowing flickering to life as the last rays of daylight fell behind the mountain range.

He wondered if his children were safe. Were they warm? Had they eaten? It was strange, how the pressures of life seemed to fall away when the parent in him rose to the essential issues of his children. But there was nothing he could do now. Not effectively, anyway. The twins were no longer in his care.

All he could do now, was wait.

Yet, with only a few minutes of evaluation, he’d sent his children off with terrorists. It wasn’t true, of course. The people who had broken in were friends of Wendell and Dax. He wasn’t sure if anyone would agree with him, but that was enough for Stump. Something in his heart told him that sending his kids away was the right thing to do...even now. There was unseen danger here.

The children would be safe the further away they were.

Stump could hear the door to Dax’s bedroom prison open and close. The doctors talked out loud as they walked through the penthouse. The home they’d turned into a prison without consent. The home they’d violated.

No. The home Ian had violated.

The very thought caused his brows to slowly sink, like rolling black storm clouds, filled with anger and vengeance.

The elevator doors closed. A few mumbled words and then footsteps towards him. The light tapping of shoes across the solid floors echoed softly until the sound stopped just shy of the doorway. Stump could smell the spice scent of Ian’s aftershave.

“How are you feeling?”

The president didn’t bother to turn the wheelchair to face him. Didn’t even turn his head. “Does it matter?”

A light sigh, “Of course it matters. That’s why I asked.”

Fat fingers gripped the cushioned arms of the wheelchair.

“You’re mad at me.”

“Mad?!” Stump snapped, “Of COURSE I’m mad!” Yanking on the oversized wheels, the chair flipped around in one abrupt motion. His pale face and bloodshot eyes stared up at the albino, “You’ve turned against me and started a coup!”

Ian Twofold let his mouth drop open. “A coup? You’re not serious.”

For a moment, Stump hesitated. It wasn’t the answer he was expecting.

“I’m more loyal to you and this administration than I’ve ever been!” the albino fumed, “Is that what this looks like to you? A take over? That I’m usurping your authority? Your power?”

“Well, I...” For a moment, he faltered...then his eyes refocused on his assistant. “You’ve lied about my children, Ian. You threw the Gnolaum to the wolves and have an innocent person drugged in the next room! You actually sentenced him to be executed, when he has done nothing to...”

“He’s a troll!” Ian cut him off. Spittle fell from his bottom lip, his eye twitching. He hovered over the president, fingers curled into claws, “Or have you forgotten that this is the very race that eats our people!?”

“No,” Stump replied firmly, “I have not forgotten. You seem to forget that I’ve seen those who served faithfully in environmental recon. I have seen others die. Brave gnomes defending our shores before the automated systems were put in place.” He met the crazed gaze with an indignant stare of his own. “But now I see a gnome who has over stepped his bounds. Exerting authority he does not have...to further a plan, based on a skewed perspective of reality!”

The albino threw his head back in a near cackling laughter.

“So I’m insane, am I?” Wiping the saliva from his bottom lip with the back of his sleeve, “Well this position doesn’t exactly provide a stable environment to work in, now does it.”

“You’re stalling.”

Gripping the arms of the wheelchair, Ian thrust his face close. “And you’re missing the point! This isn’t about you or me. It’s about the people. It’s about this city! This administration made an oath to protect the inhabitants and at the first sign of danger, you didn’t simply fail to defend us,” he snorted, “you brought them HOME!”

Pushing himself upright, Ian spun around and paced the room, like a caged animal. “This isn’t a coup, my fluffy fabulousness. If I wanted you gone, I could have dealt with you days ago. Weeks. Months, even! Oh don’t look at me so shocked. That’s never been my intent.” He looked back hurt. “I’m trying to save you.”

Stump frowned now, confused. “Save me? How is...”

“The people are scared!” Ian continued, “The poor are ripping this city apart, brick by brick as we speak...because that...that human, posing as the Gnolaum, has encouraged them to rise beyond their station! He has fostered a rebellion among our own people!”

“Ian...he is the Gnolaum.”

“No! The Gnolaum is a gnome!” he choked, “He has to be a gnome...because the rest of the world doesn’t care about the little people of this city! They hate us. FEAR us!” His pacing quickened, a hand lashing out to rap knuckles on the glass as he passed. With the billowing clouds outside, it looked like the albino was walking on air. “So I have put you back into favor with the people. You need to be seen as a true leader during this time of confusion. By making the hard decisions you couldn’t make, I’ll make sure this administration and your lineage, lives on!” Stopping in mid stride, he faced president Stump and grinned.

It was a eerie expression across a flushed face.

“Stop this madness,” Stump whispered, “if you’re bent on getting rid of them, then ban them. Send them away on a boat. Get them off the island...but don’t kill them! Don’t do anything that we might regret later on, Ian. What if, after all your conviction, you’re wrong about Wendell?”

“No,” the albino growled, “you’re still not listening. I know exactly what I’m doing.”

“The object of my desires is quite simple, Mr. Dipmier,” Noah said with a dash of anger. He loomed over me, twisting the thin strands of leather in his hand. His teeth were clenched tight, fighting to control the anger. “I want you to give me information. Specific information.” He raised an index finger, “No. Detailed information...about why you are here and what you have been doing here since you arrived. Once you have done that, I will then require a confession from you.” He looked upward, his face softening, “Something that will reassure the flock of this city, encourage them, to remain faithful and follow the edicts of the Church.”

I watched the monk sway to the rhythm of his own words, my stomach turning.

“....and then for you to leave Clockworks. Forever.”

I was about to throw out a snide remark, but the trembling old gnomes in my peripheral vision stopped me cold. For whatever reason, all three were cringing from the religious leader. If Noah walked around one side of the altar, they would retreat.

What have they done to you boys?

“Are you paying attention, Mr. Dipmier?” Noah snapped, lifting my chin with the handle of the whip. “I do not like to repeat myself.”

“Why would I help you?” I almost choked. Something stirred in my gut.

“Ahh,” Noah grinned, “The answer is simple.” Dangling the whip in front of my face, the metal tips tied to each strand looked like broken metal teeth. “You won’t have a choice.”

THA-THUMP-THUMP!

“Do you like this? It’s an ancient artifact we’ve used here in the Church for some time now. Generations in fact. Only on the ‘bad’ people, of course.” Noah casually motioned to the blue-stained box. “All these remarkable tools have been used to, shall we say ‘encourage’ the truth from those with a disposition to withhold information. Circumstances like this.”

I frowned, my eyelids narrowing. “What do you mean, like this? You kidnapped me and now you want to torture me?” I tugged at the chains more out of anger than any hope of escape. A chill bit into my wrists and shot up my arms when I did.

I wasn’t going anywhere and I knew it. My only hope was to either convince the gnome he was wrong and let me go...or comply. Which didn’t sound too bad...talking, that is. There weren’t any secrets left that I had to worry about. Noah knew who I was...or at least who I claimed to be.

“I have no doubt the government faction had their way with you. Interrogated when you were first arrested? That is their way. Technology or chemistry to extract what they want. But this,” Noah grinned, wagging the short whip in his hand, “is special. Evil to use against evil. Poetry, really. You see...we hate magic here in Clockworks. It is an abomination. Unnatural. A belief system that takes us further away from TGII and the truth of the Universe. But these artifacts,” he held the whip up, as if it were a prized trophy, “were shaped and molded by the wicked of your kind, allowing me to use that inherit evil...to deal with the disease among us.”

“That,” I gasped, trying to control the chill pulling at my spine, “doesn’t even...make sense.” I smirked. “You sniff glue, don’t you.”

One of the prisoner gnomes snickered.

“Silence!” Noah snapped, ignoring my jab. “Of course it makes sense, stupid boy.” The monk looked at me smugly, “Do we not use weapons to deal with criminals? A gun used as an evil tool can also be used to silence the evil in the criminal. A blade can defend a kingdom...”

I shook my head. “I’m thinking industrial glue.” Noah sounded too much like the philosophy teachers and professors back home. Their views never made sense to me, twisting perspectives to fit their point, mingling scriptures or biblical stories with their own interpretations...but not quite speaking the truth. “Then wouldn’t the real evil be in the person? Isn’t it,” I shivered again, “the intent that matters?”

Noah looked down at the weapon in a loving, longing way.

It was…kinda sick.

“The intent of this item is to do harm. It was created to do harm. It can only cause harm. Thus, in all sense of the word, it is evil. But,” he wagged it lightly in the air, “it is not an evil I created. My intent is to do good with it.”

“The ring is altogether evil,” I muttered under my breath.

“Excuse me?” Noah frowned.

I shook my head, “Nothing. You sound like the whip has a will of its own.”

Noah once more caressed the leather strands. “It does.”

Tha-THUMP-THUMP!

Another chill ran down my spine. One that had little to do with the cold in my muscles or bones. This guy was literally nuts, and you, Wendell, are in a deep pile of cow dung.

“Now you get it,” whispered Doubt.

Shut up.

“This has an odd name, but I never remember it correctly. I believe it translates into something close to snake bite. Or maybe it’s serpent venom...I do seem to get them mixed up.” Noah circled around the alter, to stand behind me. “Now that we’ve had our little chat, let’s get started, shall we?” Folding the sleeves of his robe back, he leaned over so I could see his face. “I would like to start by asking you how many accompanied you to this island? Exact numbers, please, with their last known whereabouts within the city.”

So that’s it? He wants information so he can round up my friends?

Subject them to this?

No way.

Taking a deep breath, I growled. “Go snort another glue stick.”

“Wonderful,” Noah said, almost gleefully. “I was hoping for some resistance!”

I watched the tiny weapon, dangling from the gnomes hands, vanish from site. I didn’t like the thought of being whipped...but it was hard to fear something that looked like a child’s toy.

Be brave Wendell.

Even hunched over the altar, I was taller than Noah. My torso hid the monk within my own shadow. The flickering candles did not reveal the movement behind me, neither was there any sound to prepare or warn me for what happened next.

The rare and expensive mägoweave, a magical cloth with the durability of the choicest plate mail, gave way. Like teeth of a wild beast, metal bit deep into flesh.

My head whipped back, eyes wild with mouth open wide.

“AHHHHHHHH!” I screamed...the sound pounding against the impenetrable walls of stone. Even as the scream faded from lack of breath, the yellow smiley continued. My lips trembled in a silent cry of anguish.

The prisoners cringed, slapping their hands over their enormous ears as I yanked against my bonds, arching my back.

I grit my teeth and clenched my eyes tight, already blinded by tears. Tickles of lava rolled down my back, setting every nerve aflame. Noah’s arm dropped a second time...the tiny whip, once again, sliced effortlessly through the mägoweave and tore at flesh.

Again I screamed, but my mind reeled. Drums pounded in my ears, drawing my attention away. This was beyond anything I’d experienced. Pain I didn’t know existed. I bit through my tongue, blood trickling over my teeth and from my bottom lip. It was near impossible to inhale. The more I struggled to take a breath, the greater the fire grew across my back. Tears of unspeakable pain ran down my face, dripping off my chin and onto the altar.

This will all have an end.

Muscle and sinew of my back lay exposed to the candlelight. Blood ran freely down the track of my spine.

Noah lowered his hand and smiled.

“I’ve always found that to be such a lovely sound.” Pulling the whip back across his palm, he examined the metal shards fastened to the end of each leather strand. “It’s the sound of attention.” Lifting my chin with the whip’s handle, he smiled mockingly, “Do I...have your attention, Mr. Dipmier?”

Draped over the cold stone, I shuddered. I could feel the Ithari working within me...the familiar pulse of warm energy pumping through my veins, but the pain didn’t stop. It didn’t let up. Fire surged through skin and muscle...down my back, making me ever aware of the torn flesh and seeping blood across my skin. Even the magical cloth refused to mend itself as it had always done before.

I looked up in confusion and Noah grunted with satisfaction. “No, the pain won’t stop. Not until I tell it to. One of the advantages of possessing such rare and powerful artifacts.”

“Why...are you doing this?” I asked, my hands shaking violently. “I...haven’t hurt...anyone.”

Noah grit his teeth. Taking the butt of the whip’s handle, he jabbed it against my temple. “Yes…you…have!” he snarled, “You’ve hurt millions, just by your presence. Then there’s the winning the Trench Wars against my Trinity pilots. That in and of itself became a sign to many that you were greater than the Church.”

That can’t be right. Why would any right-thinking person believe...”But it’s...just a game.”

Nostrils flared. “You think this is a game?”

I shook my head. “Trench Wars is a...sport. You don’t determine your religious beliefs on a sport.” But the serious look on the monk’s face disturbed me. “Do you?”

“I am astounded, Mr. Dipmier...that you claim to be one of our religious figures and yet you are so ignorant as to the population of this city. Trench Wars, the Church, our traditions...these are most important to us. They define us. They set us apart from the rest of the world, which hates and despises us.”

“I don’t,” I said weakly.

Noah let the ends of the whip fall limply to his side. “But that’s because you want something from us, now, don’t you?”

Sweat trickled down through my eyebrows, following the bridge of my nose and into my eye. The salt stung, but it paled in comparison to the burning in my back. I blinked it out. “I don’t want anything from you,” I said weakly.

The whip lashed out, slicing deeply across my ribs. My scream pierced the shadows, dying out with an echo and gasp of my breath. The blows weren’t just sharp...there was force behind them. As if I’d been hit with a hammer. Blood trickled off my shirt and across the stone.

“Don’t lie,” Noah said evenly. “There is no room for lies in this place. For sooner or later, Mr. Dipmier, I will pull the truth from you.”

Placing the weapon down upon the altar, Father Noah walked to the propped open wooden box. He ran his fingers tenderly over the objects contained within.

He’s going to kill me.

Whatever he wants, he won’t let me leave here alive.

The crazy midget has already kidnapped children, the elderly and the unwanted. He doesn’t care about me. My head swayed heavily over the stone...and I coughed. No matter what I said, Noah considered me a threat.

It was time to shift my attentions.

To survive.

One way or another, I had to survive and find a way out. To get out of my bonds and...

Why am I not healing?

But that wasn’t what was foremost on my mind. Ithari would do whatever she could...I couldn’t change that fact. No. My mind kept coming back to the whole reason I went back to the furnace in the first place. I stared up at the monk, the words finally falling from my lips.

“What did you do with my friends?”

“What?” Noah looked back, nonchalant. “Those dirty, disgusting vagabonds we pulled out from the garbage heaps?”

I flinched at the harsh, but not completely inaccurate description.

“Yes.”

Noah’s attention went back to the box. “They’re being processed and sent to satisfy the contract obligations we have in place. I wouldn’t worry about them...as far as you are concerned, they’re gone. You should focus on our conversation, Mr. Dipmier. There will be time to mourn their loss later.”

Gone?

Mourn their loss?

I growled out loud, anger seizing my chest. Simon’s dirty little face flashed through my mind, adding to the rage. Why was the world filled with such evil people? Beings who didn’t care for those less fortunate, even helpless?

Did they have no conscious?

No compassion or love?

I yanked and tugged against the chains violently, trying…unsuccessfully, to ignore the pain. “If you’ve hurt them...I’ll,” I started to say, but the threat was useless, and I knew it.

“You’ll do what, exactly?” Noah finished my sentence, not even looking up. “You’re in no position to bargain,” he smiled to himself, “or threaten me.”

“What have you done with them?” I pressed. “If you’re in control of me and you’ll obviously get what you want, then why not tell me? Give me a measure of peace before you rip the ‘truth’ from me.”

“Because,” Noah said coldly, turning to lock gazes with me, “It would give you that measure of peace,...and you deserve none.”

The anger and sheer spite in the gnome’s eyes shocked me to silence.

“However, perhaps you knowing will serve another purpose. So I can tell you that they’re being processed.”

I could feel the blood cooling on my ribs and skin. Clotting and sticking to my shirt strands. I grunted as I tried to prop myself up, “What does that mean, ‘processed’?”

“It means, my young friend, that they are all being tagged, scrubbed and disinfected, dressed and fed.”

But that didn’t sound bad, I had to admit. What am I missing? “Then why would you say they’re gone, if you’re taking care of your people?”

Noah stopped his motions to consider the words. “Hmmm. I do like that perspective. Takes a great deal off of my shoulders.” He nodded to me, rather amused, “Thank you for that.”

I gasped. No matter what I say, he’s completely oblivious to what he’s doing! Did causing harm to others come so naturally to this gnome? “What do you want from me, Noah?” I blurted out. Maybe I should try something else. “You don’t have to go through all of this. I’m happy to share any information with you that I can. I’m not in possession of any great secrets, but I don’t want to cause more trouble. I have obviously caused enough already.”

Noah lifted a thin circlet of metal from the box. He rotated it in the candle light, the surface glinting against the flames. “It’s good to see you taking responsibility for your fault in all this so readily, Mr. Dipmier. I appreciate that. I really do...but the information I want from you are things you most assuredly will not want to share.” The gnome grinned with satisfaction and walked forward with the circlet.

It was as thick as my pinky finger and made of silver. There looked to be tiny markings inscribed into the metal, but I couldn’t make them out. On the inside of the circlet, however, I noticed what looked to be spikes jutting out from the metal. Noah leaned closer.

“I need the truth,” he whispered, then almost hissing, “The absolute truth.”

Holding the metal over my head, a red light appeared from within the metal. First a glow, gentle ripples running below the hard surface...then it flickered...red sparkles, surrounding the ring itself. As the light grew...so did the ring itself. With each passing moment, it expanded, growing wider and wider, until it looked as if it would fit perfectly over my scalp.

Without another word, Noah thrust the ring down over the crown of my head.

Miniature razors bit through skin, impaling themselves and binding to my flesh...and bone.

“Ahh...AHHHH!” I screamed. Fire and ice raked across my scalp. The muscles in my neck fought to keep my head upright. This pain, however, faded almost as quickly as it began...and within moments, not a trace of discomfort was left. I blinked several times, my eyes coming into focus.

Noah stepped back and sighed satisfactorily. “Now I shall have it.”

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A tall silhouette ducked beneath the archway, wrapped in a cloak so dark it seemed to drink the light.

Where its face should have been, a mask of polished brass reflected Marn’s trembling lamp. Thin etchings spiraled across its surface…glyphs older than the city itself.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Marn said.

The visitor tilted its head. A metallic voice hummed from somewhere inside the mask.

“I was invited.”

“No one invites anything down here.”

“You did,” it said. “When you opened the gate.”

Marn froze.

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I told myself it was the archive.

That was the reason I gave, anyway.

Clean.

Professional.

Entirely defensible to anyone who might ask, including myself.

The Grandfather District Records Hall holds two centuries of pre-Consolidation census data, guild charters, and land registrations that the FAF hasn’t digitized yet. Important material. Legitimate research. Perfectly good reason to take the lower lifts all the way down to the old city levels.

Nothing to do with the fact that I grew up here.

District 9 hadn’t changed much. That was the first thing I noticed when the lift doors opened and the district spread out below me in the grey morning light. Same cluster of squat stone buildings pressed together like old men sharing warmth. Same narrow streets. Same smell of machine oil and coal smoke that the upper districts like to pretend doesn’t exist.

The clock tower at the center of the old market square still leaned two degrees to the left, which it had been doing since before I was born and would apparently continue doing until someone important cared enough to fix it.

They never would.

The bakery on the corner of Gear Lane and Ninth Main still had smoke rising from its vents, which meant old Perra’s granddaughter had kept the place running.

Both good and bad, I suppose. That summed up my little footprint of District 9 rather neatly.

I paid the lift operator twice what the fare required, because he hadn’t recognized me and that felt like a gift worth rewarding. I was not in the mood for the long version of events.

The Records Hall was a low, wide building wedged between what used to be the mill works and what passed for a district courthouse. Heavy stone. Narrow windows. The kind of architecture that says *we take record-keeping seriously here* in a way that also says *we don’t trust you.* I’d always liked that about it.

The archivist behind the front desk did not look up when I walked in.

“We open at ninth bell,” he said. “It’s eighth bell.”

“The door was unlocked.”

“That’s because I was airing it out.” He still hadn’t looked up. He was copying something from one ledger to another, very carefully, as though the fate of several factions depended on his penmanship. “Please come back at ninth bell.”

I set my satchel down on the counter. The metal arm clinked against the edge. That got his attention.

He looked up.

I’ll give him credit: he composed himself quickly. Gave me the full top-to-bottom assessment, landed on the telescopic eye and the white mustache, and arrived at the correct answer in about four seconds.

“You’re Höbin Luckyfeller,” he said.

“Guilty.”

“The historian.”

“That is my understanding, yes.”

He set down his pen very precisely. “We have three of your books.”

“Which three?”

He blinked. “I...don’t know offhand.”

“Doesn’t matter.” I pulled out my research credentials and slid them across the counter. FAF official seal, current year, full access notation. “I need the pre-Consolidation records. Guild charters, settlement registrations, district boundary agreements. If they’re not catalogued, I’ll work from raw storage.”

He looked at the credentials. Then at me. Then at the credentials again.

“I’ll have to get approval from the Chief Archivist,” he said.

“Of course you will.”

“She doesn’t come in until tenth bell.”

I looked at the ceiling.

Tgii help me, the ceiling hadn’t changed either.

The young archivist seemed to feel he owed me an explanation. “It’s policy. Full access requests require Chief Archivist sign-off. It’s not personal.” He said it the way people say *it’s not personal* when they want to make sure you know it is, in fact, entirely impersonal, which they feel is worse. “If you want to wait...”

I waited.

As I sat in the hard chair by the window, I watched District 9 go about its morning. The mill workers came first, crossing through the market square in pairs, talking in the quick shorthand of people who’ve worked alongside each other for years. Then the shopkeepers, rolling back the iron shutters over their storefronts. Then the school children, which was the worst part, because they were loud and happy and completely unaware that anything had ever gone wrong in the world.

I hadn’t planned to come back. I’d like to be honest about that, at least in my own notes.

The FAF had been asking me to digitize the Grandfather District records for three years, and for three years I’d found other things to do first. There was always another archive, another lead, another corner of the world that needed a competent historian more urgently than a district that already knew my name.

The problem with places that know your name is that they also know what came before it.

District 9 knew about the Bloodsticks years. The long ones. The years I don’t write about in the Field Guides. The years my daughter grew up without me nearby, which I have made peace with in the way that you make peace with a crooked clock tower: it still works, you’ve stopped waiting for it to straighten, but you can’t look at it without knowing.

What did I want from this?

Honestly, I couldn’t have told you.

A researcher’s answer: the records.

A true answer: something else, something I didn’t have a clean professional word for.

To walk these streets and have them be just streets. To eat a roll from that bakery and have it be just a roll. To stand in front of the building where my mother’s workshop used to be and not feel anything in particular.

I’m not sure that last one was ever going to happen.

The Chief Archivist arrived at quarter to tenth bell, which I noted approvingly. She was older than I expected. White hair, cropped short, and the particular posture of someone who has spent forty years defending the integrity of physical records against people who want to handle them carelessly. She looked at the young archivist’s note, looked at my credentials, and looked at me.

“I read your book on the Demoni Vankil,” she said.

“Most people have, apparently.”

“I didn’t like the ending.”

“Most people don’t.” I stood. “Do I have access?”

She studied me for a long moment. The authoritative disparity between us was not lost on either of us, and I want to be clear that I found it entirely reasonable. I was a famous historian with full FAF credentials. She was the Chief Archivist of a district records hall in the lower city. By any external measure, this should have been straightforward. But she held authority over records in her physical custody, in her building, in her district, and no amount of credentials changes who has the key.

That’s how it should work, actually. I’ve said as much in print.

“Full access,” she said finally. “Keln will show you to the pre-Consolidation storage.” She glanced at my metal arm. “Please don’t touch the oldest folios with that.”

“I know how to handle old paper.”

“I’m sure you do.” She turned back toward her office. “There’s a kettle in the reading room. The cups are on the left shelf, not the right. The right shelf cups have a chip problem.”

I almost smiled. “Thank you.”

She paused without turning around. “My grandmother talked about you,” she said. “You came through this district when she was young. She said you were...well.” A small pause. “She said you were both good and bad, depending on the day.”

“That’s fair.”

“She also said you were always honest.”

“Debatable.”

She made a sound that might have been a laugh and closed the office door behind her.

I followed young Keln into the pre-Consolidation storage, which smelled like every old archive smells: dust and dried ink and the particular weight of things that have not been touched in a very long time. I pulled on my cotton gloves and started on the first shelf.

By noon, I had forgotten entirely about the crooked clock tower. I had forgotten about my mother’s recipe for gear rolls, which the bakery had apparently changed. I had forgotten, for several very productive hours, about all the things I didn’t know I wanted.

There was only the record. The careful, patient, irreplaceable record.

This, I have always known. Everything else is complicated.

The work is not.

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When the Gem awakens to call a Hero, the world is ill prepared...and its fate is placed in the hands of a 17 year old boy, named Wendell. 

Some will say this is nothing but a tale of fiction.
Let them think as they may. 

After all...I can't fix stupid.

Previously: Wendell, in an attempt to save his gnome friends in the furnace area, he faces the invaders with magic. Unfortunately, he is tasered by several Centurions and electrocuted unconscious.

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Chapter 89

“Did you leave any trace?”

“No, Father. We stopped and secured the area, but there was a significant amount of damage. Repair crews will be there for days. I made sure there weren’t any cameras in that location of the tunnels, so no one knows we were there.”

“What caused the explosion?”

“Not certain. The section wasn’t near volatile containers or machinery—so it can’t be a malfunction. It had to be set on purpose. A bomb.”

“Rebels?”

“That would be my guess.”

“And the rest of the gnomes?”

“No one was hurt. They’re being processed now. Shouldn’t take more than a couple days to get them cleaned up well enough to join the last batch. These ones are pretty grungy.”

“Wonderful. I knew you were the one to entrust with these important missions of faith.” Pause. “Now, what about the human?”

“The Gnol…”

“Don’t call him that, Captain!”

“I’m sorry, Father. Forgive me. Habit, nothing more.”

“I understand. We must be careful. Thoughts become words, words become actions.”

“Yes, Father. I…uh, made sure the ‘human’ was taken directly to the cells below. Thought you might like him in the main interrogation chamber. Away from anyone else. Well…except…”

“Don’t worry about them. They are of no consequence and will soon be joining the offerings to secure our safety.” Tapping a finger to chin. “Did he have any weapons? Objects of any kind upon his person?”

“No, Father, only this.”

“A letter?”

“Yes, sir. Only a blank piece of paper. Ran a spectrum of lights over it—but it doesn’t have invisible ink. No markings at all.”

“A bit odd, don’t you think, Captain?”

“Very odd. But I’m not the one that should be thinking about these things. I leave that to those with greater minds.”

“As you should. And you’ve kept your men clear of the area?”

“Completely. The monks have done all the hands-on work from the point of our arrival.”

“We don’t want anyone second guessing, now do we? It could weaken beliefs, give the enemy a chance to destroy our carefully built spiritual ecosystem. Do we want that to happen? Any chance of that happening?”

“Absolutely not, Father.”

“Of course not. Excellent. You’ve done well, Captain. Very well, in fact. TGII will reward you for your faithfulness in the next life. I have seen a tremendous mansion in the afterlife.”

“Thank you, Father!” Pausing. “Oh, there is one small issue I need to deal with—but it…requires your insight.”

“That is?”

“One of the captives was, in truth, one of my own men. The one I told you about? The…’human’ switched places with him…and I was forced to leave him behind.”

Another pause. “What’s your point, Captain?”

“It…well…”

“Spit it out.”

“Yes, Father. He seems to have had a change of heart.”

“Has he now? And what kind of change would that be?”

Pause. “He’s convinced that we’re making a mistake. That these infidels are, in truth, innocent gnome citizens and not infidels at all.”

“I see. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.”

“Yes, Father. So what would be your counsel? He’s a good soldier and I’d like to get him the help he needs.”

“There is only one thing you can do with those corrupted by the ways of infidels, Captain. Process him with the others.”

“…Yes, sir.”

“Do you have a problem with that, Captain?”

“No, Father,” he said firmly. “I serve the Church.”

“As you should. You are a good and faithful disciple. It would be heart wrenching to see you swayed by this evil that has befallen us. Now make sure the human is placed in the Chamber of Truth, then go home. See Belinda and the kids.”

“Judy.”

“That’s right. Go home and see Judy and the children. Remind yourself what you’re doing all this for, Captain. It’s to protect the things you love.”

“Don’t you mean the people you love, Father?”

“Yes. Yes, of course I do.”

Ughhhhh.

Everything felt…heavy and sluggish. No matter how hard I willed them to, my limbs wouldn’t move. My eyes fluttered, but refused to open.

Ughhhhh.

Kids.

What happened to the kids? My mind drifted to the moments before my blackout. The screams of gnome children. Images of little bodies being thrown into the back of transport vehicles like sacks of feed.

No. No, no, no...

My eyebrows arched up, slowly…painfully…pulling my lids after them to reveal…nothing. Just a void.

A drafty darkness. Moving about me.

No…it wasn’t the darkness moving..it was me,

I blinked again, swaying…waiting for my eyes to adjust, but only the faintest grey outlines displayed any hint of my surroundings. Every muscle screamed at me…and for just a moment, I wished I’d kicked the Centurions instead of using magic.

Note to self: Little men in mirrored helmets are mean.

I had to admit, though…I felt pretty good about myself. I’d actually used magic…in combat. Not that I’d won, or even got away for that matter, but now I knew for a fact that I had the ability to dish out the pain. Not just take it.

I had to smile.

Ow.

Smiling hurt too.

I forced myself to take a deep breath and…immediately regretted it. I coughed hard. The chill air was earthy. A damp scent, like dirt after a rain.

No.

It was older. Like my grandmother’s forgotten potting shed, with hints of mold, because she let things cook in the sun. I blinked again, hoping my eyes would adjust. I could still feel the ache through my spine and back muscles.

That was one heck of a jolt those midgets gave me!

Ungh. My skull complained with every motion and I almost fell over.

Oooooooo, I’m going to be sick.

Even though I could feel the warmth fed to me through the mägoweave, I felt chilled to the bone. Tiny points of pain pricked me along my neck and spine. I could tell that Ithari was working on me, but my limbs still felt numb. Especially my forearms.

Odd.

I tried to wiggle my fingers, but couldn’t tell if they were responding. My legs were shifting, and I felt hints of pressure in my knees, but everything was so cold. A dull pressure, greatest around my wrists.

Leaning back, a scraping sound echoed.

“Shhhh,” mumbled a strained voice. It was gruff and harsh, with a gravel undertone.

“W-who’s there?” I squeaked out.

“Shhh,” came a second voice from behind me. This one was a bit higher-pitched. “Some of us are trying to sleep. Do you mind?”

“Oh,” I stammered. “Uh…I’m sorry.” But I immediately snorted. “No, wait. I’m not sorry…where am I?”

“You’re in the dark,” replied the voice. It was followed by its own snort. “And they said he was smart.”

“Oh, leave the child alone, he’s not hurting anything.”

The last voice was smooth, calm and soft. As if the owner was sitting there, in the dark, waiting.

“I have a hard enough time trying to get any sleep around here,” the first voice grumbled. “You may appreciate our generous accommodations, but I do not. Therefore, shut up.”

“Time to get up…already?” Said the second voice.

“No,” answered the third. “Snappy-pants is just angry that…”

“Argh,” I grunted aloud, now ignoring them all. Tugging my forearms back, sharp pains shot through my wrists. I tugged and instantly flinched. “OW!” Something sharp cut into my flesh, and again, that scraping sound echoed around me.

I flinched, but my arms were held fast.

That’s when I noticed my lack of movement. Whatever was around my wrists, also held me in place. In this kneeing position. I tugged harder and flinched again, jolts shooting up through my arms and shoulders to get to my neck.

“What’s going on?” I grunted.

“Oh, I wouldn’t bother fighting the chains,” the third voice said soberly. “Won’t do you much good. The shackles are meant to keep you uncomfortable. They weaken you by keeping your body cold.” Then in a loud whisper, “The key is to sit still and relax. The effects of the metal fade if you’re compliant.”

I squinted, leaning forward, trying to make out the curved pieces of metal biting into my flesh. The voice was right. I blinked a few more times. Chains stretched across a stone slab, ending at my forearms.

Oh, come on…I’m shackled? Dropped from High-Tech right to No-Tech? Seriously?

I grunted loudly.

“Doesn’t anyone care that I’m trying to get sleep around here?” grumbled the first voice.

“No,” said the second and third voices in unison.

It’s going to be ok. Relax, Wendell. You’ve been in bad situations since you got here. This isn’t a problem, it’s just a new challenge. Chains. It’s nothing.

I nodded to myself.

Just a challenge. Something simple to figure out. You have tools now. The gnomes know who you are…you don’t have to hide anymore. Use what you have. What you know. Be what you are. I nodded again, resolute.

Stop hiding it.

I whispered, “Välo.”

All around me, a soft, white light came to life. Like an approaching dawn, the light continued to grow, mimicking the image I held in my mind.

“Oooooo,” cooed the second voice. “He’s one of us!”

“I’m gonna come over there and punch you right in the head if you don’t shut up,” warned the first voice.

“Yeah,” scoffed the third. “Let’s see you try. Why don’t you close your eyes and go back to sleep.”

The light flooded the chamber, revealing my full surroundings.

I was right, I hated to admit. I was in a dungeon. Uneven stone walls and floors, with no window to be found. Huge pillars, maybe four feet in circumference rose high above me, supporting what looked to be a slanted roof. Statues of gnomes wrapped around the pillars.

Curious things.

The stone was shaped to look like the tiny race, working in pairs. A stout gnome on the bottom, chipping away with hammer and chisel, while a second, balancing on the first gnome’s shoulders, worked the stone higher up. The detail of the facial expressions was lifelike, hair and protruding tongues adding to the flow of the action. Oddly out of place, too…especially when I knew I was surrounded by a technologically advanced civilization.

It reminded me of Til-Thorin.

Well,…the being locked up part of Til-Thorin, anyway.

Straw lay scattered across the floor, inches thick and piled high within the corners. Small clumps bunched near my knees at the base of the altar. A musty scent of urine lingered in the air. It wasn’t noticeable at first, the chill helping to mask its presence.

I wrinkled my nose.

Smelled like someone needed to call maid service.

The only exception to my stone environment was the large wooden door set squarely in the wall in front of me.

My chest heaved as I started to laugh.

I know, not the reaction one would think to have, waking up chained to some psycho-alter. But for all the stress and strain, for all the events that went awry, I couldn’t help it.

It wasn’t a loud or boisterous laugh…but my shoulders lightly bounced and a few snorts escaped my lips.

I’m not even supposed to be here, I thought comically. Abandoned, chased, blamed, accused, hated…this is all so…NOT what this was supposed to be!

I laughed again to myself as I shook my head.

Is this what happens when you try to help people? When you try to be the person you’ve been asked to be? You get blamed and… I struggled for the right word.

“Crapped on anyway?” Doubt chimed in.

Exactly. It was a disturbing thought.

“No. This is not ok,” he added. “In fact, this is very, very bad, Wendell.

I tugged against the chains. Once again, intense pain shot through my wrists, back and neck. I wasn’t going to sit here, while my friends were who-knows-where and suffering who-knows-what…at the hands of a looney midget with a power complex!

Concentrating, I imagined the light collecting into a single spot above my head.

Hold that thought. Focus on it.

“You know, you’re really getting good at that,” Doubt said cheerfully.

Thanks.

“Now we cane clearly see the crap we’re in,” he added.

Ignoring the chill running through my arms and legs…I imagined the light rising a few feet above me. Holding a snapshot of the thought, I whispered, “Teho.”

Immediately the light followed the path I’d imagined with clear intent. Like liquid rolling across a counter, it collected a few feet above my head, slowly growing in intensity. With it out of my direct line of sight, it became easier to see my surroundings clearly.

This included my unusual roommates.

Three gnomes sat against the walls, gaping at the light over my head. Two of the dirty faces beamed with delight, while the third looked overly annoyed and turned his head into a ragged sleeve.

“Bravo!” cheered one, clapping. The giant mustache, so long it was braided at each end, rose high, to reveal an open grin of delight. “Well done!”

“Shhhh!” grunted the gnome next to him. Dirty hands pulled the sailor’s cap down over his eyes and he turned in toward the wall.

“So it is true,” the third commented sadly. The gnome sat alone, chained to the opposite wall. “Noah captured the Gnolaum?” He glanced over at his fellow gnomes and shook his head. “This isn’t good.”

I tugged again on the chains that bound me.

…but they were firmly attached to either side of the altar.

“You sure you’re going to be alright?”

Nathan Taylor wasn’t actually sure anymore, but he nodded anyway. He’d been alone before, of course, but never when so much seemed to rest on his shoulders.

Alone.

The battery assisted chair was low on juice and stalled on the small lip of the door jam. Shamas gave it a small nudge, helping it over.

Nat smiled weakly. “Thanks.”

“I can help you if you need me to,” the bodyguard added, seeing the solemn look on the programmer’s face. “My computer skills are a bit weak, but I’m a quick learner.” He gave the empty street a once over.

Shamas knew they were safe—but he did it out of habit.

The shops had all closed years ago. It was only the occasional tumbling scrap of paper and the faded signs overhead that reminded him that this had once been a bustling commercial community. A place booming with business and opportunity. It was all dust and garbage now.

A shame, really.

Then again, it was also perfect for a G.R.R. cell location. “There seems to be little need for my skills of late,” he said with a hint of sarcasm. “Everyone runs off and does what they want, no matter how hard I try to stop them.”

The comment made Nat crack a smile. “Bellows will need you. This surge of anger among the populace has to be focused and controlled. If it isn’t, a lot of folks are going to get hurt. Your skills are more vital than you think.”

“I’m a bodyguard, not a group therapist.”

“You’re someone who understands the nature of others. You know how people react, move, plot. You also understand the mob mentality, Shamas. If nothing else, you could assist as a first rate counselor, so don’t sell yourself short.”

“Hmph,” Shamas grunted. “You suddenly sound like a natural leader yourself. Maybe Deloris was right—Motherboard might not be the only one who can pull this off.” He gave the cripple a light jab in the shoulder.

Nat just frowned. “Motherboard,” he sighed. “Right.”

“Something wrong?”

Shaking his head. “No. I’m alright. Just…tired I guess.”

“Get some rest.”

“I plan on it. Thanks.”

With a final wave, the door slowly creaked to a close behind him. He turned the wheelchair around and locked it. The final latch on his life, trapping himself inside.

That’s what it felt like.

No matter how hard he worked, or how hard he tried, Nathan couldn’t get ahead. He didn’t know how. Motherboard was the face of the G.R.R., even though Nathan Taylor had been there from the very beginning. One line of code at a time, he’d locked himself away, hiding from the world.

The world he had always wanted to change.

“Now I’m all alone again,” he whispered aloud. “Just like in the beginning.”

Deloris was gone. Slid the key to this building across the desk before handing in her resignation. She’d stopped here first and gathered all her physical belongings. It was a life she just didn’t want anymore. She wanted to be with her husband and to support him in his dreams as he had spent a lifetime supporting her.

Not that Nat could blame her. Quite the opposite, in fact. He envied Deloris. She finally knew what she wanted more than anything else. Morty was brilliant and he obviously loved his wife…and she, him.

“What else could a decent person want?” he sighed.

At least he wouldn’t have to pretend anymore.

Unlocking and lifting the dashboard up from the custom wheelchair, Nat stretched his arms…and stood up.

“Ohhhhh,” he yawned loudly, leaning to the side. With a grunt, he threw an arm high over his head, stretching. “I forget how good that feels!” Hips popped as did his spine. Sitting in one place, day after day, only stretching while alone in bathrooms or in his locked bedroom wasn’t easy. He twisted and turned, pushed and stretched, trying to shake off the pain in his muscles. Even his bones felt weak from sitting for so long.

The elevator bell dinged.

Nearly falling over his own feet, Nat threw himself back into his chair and slammed the dashboard back down into place. Just in time to see Chuck stumble through the doors. He spun around, trying to gather the long strands of his beard from the gaps in the sliding doors.

“Blasted facial hair!”

“Chuck!”

“Woo-HAW!” the wizard gasped, throwing himself back against the opposite wall.

Slapping his palm over his chest, he gripped his robe tightly, heaving.

“Are you trying to KILL me, boy?” he yelled. “Why would you spook an old man like that?!” He blinked twice, his chest rising and falling heavily with each gasp of breath.

“What are you doing here?” Nat exclaimed. “No one’s supposed to be here anymore. I got word you made an attempt to get into the Citadel…” He gave the wizard a look of disdain. “…along with a charge of kidnapping? Seriously, Chuck? Kidnapping?”

Brushing himself off, the wizard straightened his hat. “Oh no, we got in just fine—there was no ‘attempt’ involved. We asked nicely, they let us pass, and…” Then, shaking his finger, “You need to go shopping, boy,…there’s no food in this place. Can’t properly entertain if you don’t have any food around.”

“Chuck.”

“Yes?”

“Why are you here?” Nat asked again, ignoring the wizard’s off-topic remarks. Then, “Wait. How did you even get in here? Deloris and I have the only keys.”

“Please,” he scoffed. “I’m a wizard. You don’t think I can’t wave my hand and…”

Nat frowned.

“Oh, alright,” Chuck huffed. “Your girlfriend turned out to be an exceptional lock pick.”

Nathan’s eyes popped open wide. “My…girlfriend?”

Walking around the back of the wheelchair, Chuck grabbed the handles abruptly and pushed Nat into the elevator. “You know…the cute one who’s always eating.”

It was difficult to get comfortable, no matter how I shifted my weight.

My knees weren’t just numb from kneeling, they were weak and heavy.

Maybe that’s their intent, I complained, trying to shift my hips and take some of the strain off my thighs and back. Bring the tall human down to their size.

I glanced at the chained gnomes, immediately averting my gaze.

For the past hour the three had hardly said a word. They simply…stared. Three sets of huge, round eyes, staring through the shadows at me. The feeling was a bit too familiar and it made me shudder more than once.

“You know,” said the second, his voice cutting through the silence like a knife, “I didn’t think the Gnolaum would be a human.” He glanced at his fellow gnome captives, eyebrows bobbing about. “Seriously disappointing, if you ask me.”

“Well, what did you think he would be?” asked the first. “A giant? A kutollum? Or maybe a sorcerer from Mäväro?”

Shrugging. “I don’t know. Did he even have to be a ‘he’ at all? Why couldn’t it be a female? Ooooo,” he grinned, adjusting his thick coke-bottle glasses over his bulbous nose. “An evolu female. No. Wait. A leggy evolu female. That would have been nice.” His eyebrows bobbed up and down again. “That’s a whole level of hot, right there.”

“What?” snorted the first, now wanting in on the conversation. He sat up abruptly from his prone position and snorted. “A female? You’re joking. That makes no sense what-so-ever.”

“Oh, I don’t know…who said it had to make sense? How does us being in this cell make sense? Or that the leader of our church has gone funny…,” he paused, then shook his index finger, “without any ha, ha part of the funny, mind you! None of this makes any sense.”

“Downright stupid, you are,” snapped the first, shaking his head.

“Don’t be so rude, Vin,” said the third. “He doesn’t mean any harm.”

“Well, I’m just saying,” said the second, completely ignoring Vin’s derogatory remark, “that a pretty lady with a good heart would do far more good in the world than a male. That’s all. She’d be nice to look at…and smell a might better than the lot of us. Maybe the whole world wouldn’t be at war right now if we all had something pretty to look at?” He nodded triumphantly at Vin. “Did you think of that? No-you-did-not.”

I couldn’t help but grin. Lady Tamorah was certainly beautiful, and…I couldn’t argue that such beauty would turn heads. I’d never get close enough to vouch for how she smelled, though.

“He has a point,” agreed the third.

“Thank you, Tabbermain,” said the second.

“You are most welcome. The thought of smelling a pretty elf sounds nice.”

“Shut up!” snapped Vin. “You’ve both lost it. The Gnolaum’s always been a male…and here you are, talkin’ ‘bout sniffin’ girls like they were flowers. You’ve popped your brain-pans!”

“Well, he may be a human,” Tabbermain continued, ignoring Vin’s comment, “but it’s better than a vallen or a therrin, don’t you think? Or…” He shuddered so hard the shackle on his ankle rattled. “Could you imagine a Täuku Gnolaum?” He winced. “Ew.”

“Vallen? Therrin? Täuku!? The Gnolaum’s a hero, not a villainous, flesh-eating monster,” snapped Vin.

“You do know I’m right here,” I cut in, frowning at each of them in turn. “I can hear you.”

The room fell silent. None of the confined prisoners looked me in the face.

“What an odd bunch,” whispered Doubt. “You’ll fit in just fine.”

Shut up.

All three looked exceptionally old. Older than Morty or Höbin, I guessed—each with wild tufts of facial hair for eyebrows, mustaches, and beards. Unlike myself, the gnomes were only shackled by a single leg.

“My name’s Wendell,” I tried with an uncertain grin. Then I added, “Wendell P. Dipmier.”

Nothing. Each gnome completely averted their gaze from my general direction.

“Did I do something wrong?” I asked awkwardly.

But the three gnomes didn’t get a chance to answer. The sound of a key being inserted into the door startled us all.

The two prisoners sitting together, Vin and Tabbermain, grasped onto one another like little frightened children. They shivered and stared at the door, while the tiny gnome on his own, frantically scooped up the straw around him. The echo of his single chain rang out as he quickly heaped a pile onto his legs and chest.

Taking a hint, I whispered, “Läkätä,” and the light instantly vanished, plunging us into darkness.

“Yup,” the second whispered to himself from under the straw. “He’s one of us.”

“Shut UP,” snapped Vin, before burying his face into Tabbermain’s shoulder.

The sound of the dungeon door opening raked at my spine. Like fingernails down a chalkboard, the slab of wood scraped across uneven floor. Like a creeping dawn, a dull light seeped into the room. Torches, held high, bounced lightly along. One by one—small hands, protruding from robes, holding the flames aloft, entered the room. Each figure had a hood drawn over their head, without faces for me to see clearly.

“You’re awake,” said the closest robe. Calm and deliberate, the tone had a slight nasal quality to it.

I squinted, trying to see up into the hood, but the torch was held high, casting deep shadows. The glow completely hid the gnome’s face. The folds of the heavy robe dragged along the floor as the figure approached, revealing brown sandaled feet and fat, stubby toes.

The voice did sound a bit familiar. There was only one person I could think of, who would be responsible for me being here. Responsible for the problems I’d experienced, both inside the Trench Wars and out.

“Father Noah, I’m guessing,” I said aloud.

The figure hesitated for a moment, the hood tilting ever-so-slightly. “Very good, Mr. Dipmier,” Noah replied. “We’ve never officially met, but I won’t bother offering you my hand, if you don’t mind.”

I snorted to myself.

There wasn’t any need for deception on the gnome’s part. Noah didn’t like me. I knew it. I could hear it in the gnome’s tone, but more importantly, I was in a dungeon…in chains.

“I don’t bite, you know,” I countered. “Besides, you’re the one who had me tasered and brought here…not the other way around. Remember? Or do you treat all your guests in such a rough manner?” I grinned smugly. “Centurions or not, I know they work for you and not the government.”

Pulling the hood back over his shoulders, Noah stood there and smiled. Not of triumph or revenge, not even of mockery…but of knowledge. The monk looked calm. Almost too calm.

“I met President Stump,” I smirked. “Good guy. So, who should really feel uncomfortable? Not you. You’re holding all the cards.”

It wasn’t until that split second that I remembered…

I wasn’t alone when I’d been captured. The entire furnace area had been flushed out. All the people rounded up. To make matters worse, Simon and Enid were still missing.

That was the smile. He knew I knew.

“What did you do with the muddles?” I growled threateningly. Chains rattled as I pulled. Behind the lip of the altar, two animated eyes glared up and over the lip of stone from my shirt.

Behind Noah, four robed figures stepped forward. Each carried a torch in one hand…and what looked to be a club in the other.

“Isn’t that a derogatory term for the homeless, Mr. Dipmier?” he grinned sarcastically. “And you believe yourself to be a champion of the people. Shame, shame. But we’ll get to them soon enough. There are always certain precautions one must take when dealing with an enemy.” Noah stared down at me cooly, the flickering light enhancing the dark rings under his eyes. “You never know how they might react under the most innocent of situations.”

I raised a numb arm, lightly shaking my wrist. The chain rattled. “You mean, like, try to get out of shackles?”

Noah chuckled. “That and…revenge for past offenses.”

I scoffed. “You don’t know me very well if you think I’m going to be violent or get revenge for being kidnapped. Been there, done that. This doesn’t even make my top five worst moment list.”

Casually sitting on the edge of the altar, Noah grinned. “I plan on changing that soon enough.”

“That’s it, Wendell, be a retard and tick off the midget with the key to your freedom!“ Doubt snapped. “At least preTEND to be civil.”

I frowned. “Do you mean getting to know me, or…are you referring to my worst moment list?”

The smile grew. “Yes.”

My head flopped forward with a heavy sigh.

“I might as well light up the sign out front for business and add ‘G.R.R. Cell’ to the bottom of it!” Nat growled. He spun his manual wheelchair around, nearly crushing the wizard’s toes. Glancing over at the teenagers, who were rifling through his pile of electronics on a side table, he barked, “Don’t touch anything!”

Buffy flinched and dropped the circuit board.

Freak, Tumbler, and Telly were seated on the sofa in front of the television. Lili was nestled into one of the leather chairs, her arms around her knees. Nibbles, however, batted her eyes at the computer genius, then slid a stool up next to his main console.

He gulped and tugged the collar of his shirt.

“Are you seriously part of the G.R.R.?” Kip asked bluntly, obviously excited.

Nat mumbled something incoherent under his breath and then, “Yes, I really am part of the…” He whipped back to Chuck. “Why did you bring them here?! Don’t you realize how badly you’ve jeopardized the entire G.R.R. network? Now we can be accused of kidnapping!”

“Not really,” chimed Kip. “We’re both 18. Legal adults.” He shrugged. “I won’t be pressing charges.” He looked to his sister. “You?”

“Don’t look at me,” Buffy sighed. “I don’t want to go back to living 24/7 under a microscope. Besides, we don’t get to do anything without Twoface giving his approval. I hate that.”

“Exactly,” grinned her brother. “In fact, I just might sign up to be a terrorist myself.”

“Terrorist!?” gasped Nat, looking rapidly between both youth. “W-we are NOT terrorists!”

“The cops say you are,” Kip smirked. “It’s also on the web,” he glanced over and winked at his sister, “…and you know if it’s on the web, it’s gotta be true.”

“ARRRGHHH!” Nat bellowed.

“Goodness!” Chuck snorted, spinning the wheelchair around and away from the teens. “Calm yourself, boy, before you blow a brain cell and fall over. So they have a misconception about what you do. Kids make up their own minds, so show them what you do and stop fretting about it! Good news is, we didn’t kidnap anyone.”

Buffy plopped down onto the couch next to the TNT crew and snatched up the remote with a bored sigh.

Nat was already shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter what we think, Chuck—the government will say differently. They also own the media. They’ll put a spin on this situation and call us…”

“Hey, look!” Buffy squealed, pointing at the flatscreen. “We’re on TV!”

Sure enough, WHRN’s anchor desk displayed pictures of the twins grinning back at viewers, a large headline overhead which read: Widower Stump In Mourning—Twins Kidnapped in Attempted Government Coup.

The announcer looked into the camera gravely. “As the city continued to rage with violent outbreaks from factory workers, a renegade G.R.R. terrorist cell infiltrated the heart of our government. Six Centurion soldiers and two secret servicemen were brutally slaughtered within the Citadel as the Stump twins were forcefully abducted from the loving embrace of our illustrious president.”

“WHRN has been informed that advanced technology was employed to bypass the advanced security systems in place, including the distortion of camera footage. Authorities are working around the clock to follow potential leads and ensure the safe return of the Stump children. In the meantime, Ian Twofold, the president’s personal assistant, had this to say about the tragic event…”

The scene changed to the president’s personal media room within his suite. The albino wiped his eyes with a snow white handkerchief and then handed it to one of six gnomes in black suits and mirrored sunglasses behind him.

“It is a sign of dark times when a group, forever claiming to be champions of freedom for our beloved people, rears up and attacks, not only our beloved leader…but his defenseless children.” Pausing, Ian reached up and slowly pulled his sunglasses from his face…revealing red, swollen eyes. “This has devastated our beloved President…as it would any loving father!”

He paused, sniffing, and wiped an eye with a pale knuckle. “Our beloved leader has fallen horribly ill, overcome with grief as officers comb this city, searching desperately for his children.” Looking into the camera directly, the sadness turned to a vicious sneer. “Whoever you are…you vipers, we will find you! Mark my words, you foul excuse for gnomes…I love those two children like my own…and I swear those who are responsible will taste the full wrath of the law!”

With a squeak, Buffy clicked off the television and dropped the remote like it was infected.

“Love those two children?” gagged Kip.

“Ewww,” shuddered Buffy. She pulled her legs up off the floor and curled into a ball. “That’s just…gross!”

“Six Centurion soldiers brutally slaughtered?” gasped Chuck.

“Don’t forget the secret servicemen,” moaned Tumbler.

The wizard looked around the room, befuddled. “But we didn’t hurt a fly!”

“Wow,” whispered Telly.

“We are so screwed,” whimpered Freak, dropping his face into his own palms. “If I get out of this alive, the wife’s gonna kill me.”

“…terrorists,” sighed Nat.

“So look at the good news!” chimed Nibbles. She sat with her arms folded, swiveling softly on the stool, blowing bubbles.

Everyone stared back.

“Oh, come on,” she teased. “Didn’t anyone notice what they did?”

“You better enlighten us,” said Lili.

Popping her bubble, she grinned wide. “They don’t have any pictures of us? Come on! How many times were we scanned walking through that place?”

“Half a dozen?” replied Telly.

“If not more,” she countered, “so doesn’t it seem strange to any of you that this Ian guy doesn’t spit out that he knows who we are?” She blew a quick bubble and popped it between her molars. “Sounds to me like they don’t want us to be found out…at least not yet.”

Nat stared at the black TV screen. “Maybe they don’t know where we are after all…or…”

“They don’t actually care,” Lili finished.

“Does that mean Twoface is…” Buffy choked, looking to her brother for comfort. “…going to hurt our dad?”

Kip reached over and squeezed her hand.

“Not if we can help it, my dear.” Grasping the back of Nathan’s wheelchair firmly, Chuck spun him around. Glaring. “Which comes down to you.”

“Me?! Why does any of this come down to me? I’m not the one breaking into government buildings and stealing children!”

“Not children,” Kip and Buffy said in stereo.

The wizard flicked the programmer sharply in the forehead with a boney finger.

“Ow.”

“None of your lip, young man, or next time I’ll use the cane.”

“Sorry.”

“We need your creepy blue friend out here.”

Nat frowned then. “He is not creepy, so stop saying that.”

Chuck shrugged. “Your blue friend, then.”

“What do you want Cryo for?”

“Cryo 64 online!” boomed a jovial, slightly giddy voice. The small projector overhead buzzed along the ceiling, throwing its beam over the main console. A big blue face grinned down at Nat and the wizard. “What’s uuuuuuup!?”

“I didn’t call you,” Nat said sharply without looking up. His eyes remained fixed on Chuck.

“I did,” replied the wizard.

“SwEET!” piped Cryo. “I love to be of service!”

“Uhhh,” stammered Nibbles, “what’s wrong with it?”

“It’s a him,” corrected Nat, “not an ‘it’,…and he’s broken.”

“No I’m not,” said Cryo. “I feel absolutely fanTAStic.”

“Shut down,” Nat ordered.

“Belay that command,” Chuck said cooly, standing upright. Smiling brightly at the hovering face, he said aloud, “Cryo—we are in desperate need of your help.” He glanced momentarily at Nat, then shifted back. “And only YOU can do it. Our very lives may depend on your success. Are you up to a challenge?”

“Up to it? OH yeah, baby—throw it my way! I’ll knock it out of the park…slam dunk it…slap it silly and eat it for breakfast.”

Buffy giggled. “I like him—he’s funny.”

“And you are aDORable!” Cryo replied with a wink.

“Ok, this is gettin’ more disturbing by the moment,” grumbled Tumbler.

“For once,” Telly added, “I’m with you.”

Cryo grinned back at both of them through blue teeth.

Chuck stepped between them, pointing at the digital apparition. “We need you to dig deep into the Citadel. Trace any communications, both public and private, concerning Dax. We ticked off the folks in charge. At best, we made them nervous—and I don’t want them deciding to kill the monkey before we can get to him!” One of his eyebrows raised high on his forehead. “Think you can keep track where the gnomes take him…and make sure we know what happens as it happens?”

“Not a problem!” Cryo64 blipped. For a split second, the face faded, the black gaps representing eyes, closed. “He’s in the Presidential suite.”

“You found him…already?” the wizard asked, impressed.

“I certainly did, gramps,” Cryo beamed.

“Uhhh…Good,” replied Chuck.

“He’s still there,” Cryo chimed.

“Alright,” Chuck nodded.

“Yup, still there.”

“Fine.”

“Still there.”

“Cryo!” the wizard snapped.

“Yes? Oh, Dax is still there, by the way.”

Gritting his teeth. “Let me make a correction. Tell us WHEN they move him and we’ll go from there. Alright?”

“You GOT it, buddy.” The blue face stopped talking and simply…smiled.

Chuck turned back to Nat and sneered. “Yes, he is creepy.”

Before the gnome could reply, “Now we come down to you.” The wizard pulled a small device from the sleeve of his robe and handed it to Nathan.

Nat inspected the device in his palm. “How on…” He looked up. “How did you get this?”

Shrugging. “I have my connections.” Then, in a softer tone. “The President’s fingerprint is on that device. I want you to use it to reverse the credits I paid in fines. Put them on a credit stick and make them untraceable. I want them portable, so whoever uses them, can do so anonymously.”

Nat nodded, still staring at the device. “I can do that.”

“Next, I want you to create a document with a time stamp. Use the President’s signature, absolving all of us from being prosecuted.” Leaning forward, he flipped the gnome around and pushed his face uncomfortably close, so their big noses touched. “And most importantly, I want you to hack into every media station in Clockworks. I don’t care how and I don’t care about the damage—just get control of the media.”

“Why?” Nat scoffed.

Standing upright, the sides of Chuck’s mustache lifted in a grin. “Because I need you as a last resort backup.”

There was a tug on the wizard’s sleeve.

“Yes? What is it, my dear?”

Lili fidgeted in place. “What about Wendell?”

“Wendell?”

“How do we know he’s still ok? We haven’t heard from him in days and no one’s talking about him. We’ve been so focused on Dax and the uproar in the city—it’s like Wendell’s been forgotten.”

Chuck did a double take.

“That seems a tad odd, my dear, coming from you of all people,” he said.

Seeing her concern, Chuck lifted her hand gently and patted it. “I know this might sound harsh, dear one, but that boy is clever and resilient. Not to mention protected by the power of the Ithari. He’ll be just fine. Our priority is to get Dax back. He needs our help right now, not Wendell.” He smiled brightly. “Our hero is probably kicking back with his friends down below, chatting away.”

No matter how many candles were lit, the chamber retained its cold grip on me.

I shivered violently, then uncontrollably.

Even during the magical storm I’d experienced on my way to Til-Thorin, the magical cloth had protected me from the sleet and bone-numbing pain. But I couldn’t feel my hands at all now.

More than once, I found my teeth chattering and I had to clench my jaw tight to control them.

The good news was, I didn’t feel the slightest pain. That was…so long as I didn’t move. The bad news was, if I did move, it felt as if my muscles were being torn from my shoulder sockets.

If my discomfort mattered to anyone else in the room, no one showed it.

The monks worked diligently in silence to create a wide circle around the altar using various sized candles of golden wax. Noah stood back as bodies ushered through the doorway and nimble hands organized the wicks in arched patterns.

Holy candles, Noah shared aloud, but something wasn’t right.

The three old gnomes chained to the walls cowered from the circle of light and soon an odd smell filled the room. The smoke rose into the air, taking over the dank, musty scent…replacing it with a bitter odor that burned my nose.

The light also played with one’s perceptions, casting multiple shadows of Noah upon the walls as he paced about.

“Thank you, brother,” Noah said softly, taking a wooden box from a monk. “That will be all.” He gently placed the container on the stone altar between me and himself.

The box was covered in strange symbols, carved into the deep blue-stained wood, dozens of knots protruding from holes around its rim.

With a silent nod, the monk retreated hastily—taking all but two of the guards with him. The large door scraped across the floor, closing with a loud WUMP!

For long moments, all that could be heard was the rattling of the chains as I fidgeted.

“This is not good, Wendell. Not good at all,” Doubt hissed.

My pulse raced as unsettling memories came back to me.

World History class and thoughts of the Spanish Inquisition. Unspeakable torture flooded my mind. I fidgeted, struggling to keep my teeth from chattering.

“You’re stuck in a dungeon with a psychotic midget, Wendell.” Doubt let out a deep sigh. “I bet Dorothy and Oz didn’t have to deal with garbage like this…”

You’re not helping. I tugged at the chains again.

“What could Noah possibly want with us? So you spoke out against the leaders…so what? You encouraged gnomes to stand up for themselves…but torture? Come on! Ok, your revolution comment may have been over the top, but… “ Doubt sighed again, I’m assuming at my stupidity. “Even I thought it sounded like such a good idea at the time.”

“I hope you realize, Mr. Dipmier,” Noah broke the silence, “that you’ve been causing a great deal of stress for me…and this magnificent city.”

“Yup, he’s pissed about the speech.”

Gulping. “Right…about that. You see, I was just trying…”

“I agree with you,” Noah cut me off.

I frowned. “Uhhh…you…huh?”

Noah placed his hands within the folds of his robes and showed me a kind, genuine smile. “I said I agree with you.”

My brows crinkled forward and remained stuck there. It didn’t make sense that Noah would agree with anything I had to say. This turn of attitude made me feel ill.

“There is a need for a revolution in this great city…as well as a purging of evil influences among our people. And I’m just the right person to make that happen.”

“…aaaand there’s the psycho,” Doubt squealed.

With slow and lingering movements, Noah kept his direct attention focused on me. “The general people of Clockworks City are sheep, Mr. Dipmier. Good people who are, in reality, mere animals too stupid to make proper decisions for themselves.” His fingers curled around the far edges of the blue box—worn and weathered from time and use. He pulled the container closer to him, hugging it against his pear-shaped belly. “They need a firm hand. A brighter mind to guide them. Someone to navigate them away from evil influences that would disturb their peace and interrupt their duty to their community.”

“And that person, I take it,” I cut in, refusing to hide my sarcasm, “is supposed to be you?”

Noah’s expression softened so much, he almost looked kind.

Almost.

“Exactly. Which is why my position and responsibilities are so important.” Deft hands started untying the series of knots binding the lid. One by one the circular pieces of rope came undone. “My holy and sacred duty is to make sure the flock is not polluted by the actions or beliefs of heretics, enemies of TGII and, of course, charlatans.”

The top of the container slid off as the last knot came undone.

Noah lifted out a whip.

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Father Noah is the kind of man who can smile warmly at a child while quietly sentencing an entire district to starvation three rooms away.

As High Priest of TGII, he presents himself as a calm and disciplined spiritual leader devoted to order, tradition, and the protection of the gnome people. His sermons are measured. Intelligent. Refined. He rarely raises his voice because he never needs to. Noah understands something most rulers never learn: true power is not found in fear alone, but in convincing people they should fear disappointing you.

Behind the ceremonial robes and polished scripture lies a deeply manipulative mind. Noah does not see faith as sacred. He sees it as structure …a machine capable of steering entire populations with precision. To him, most people are weak, emotional, and incapable of governing themselves responsibly.

Rules exist to control them.
Prophecy exists to direct them.
Hope itself is simply another tool to be weaponized.

While the citizens of Clockwork City trust him as a protector, Noah quietly bends doctrine, law, and public perception to strengthen both his influence and the authority of the church.

What makes Father Noah truly dangerous is that he doesn’t believe he’s evil.

In his mind, sacrifice is necessary.
Freedom is dangerous.
Mercy is inefficient.

He considers himself one of the few willing to make the “hard choices” required to preserve gnome society…no matter the cost. Even those closest to him rarely see the truth beneath the performance. But over time, the fruit of his decisions begins to rot everything around him. The deeper one looks into Noah’s world, the clearer it becomes:

The man preaching salvation may be the very thing destroying his people.

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There are some people who walk into a room and demand attention.

Brother Noah (now known as ‘Father’ Noah) isn’t one of them.

That’s part of what makes him dangerous.

The first thing most notice about the elderly gnome is how ordinary he appears. Thin shoulders beneath layered robes. Calm eyes. Slow movements. A measured voice that rarely rises in anger. He speaks like a patient grandfather or a weary scholar who has spent too many years carrying the burdens of lesser minds.

And perhaps that’s exactly how he wants to be seen.

In the underground reaches of Clockwork City, Father Noah…also called Brother Noah among the faithful…is the powerful head of the Church of TGII. To the public, he is viewed as a spiritual guide, an orator, and a stabilizing force among a fractured people struggling to survive in the shadows of a larger world.

But in Chronicles of a Hero, appearances are often the first lie.

The deeper one digs into the world of the gnomes, the more complicated Father Noah becomes. He is not a cackling villain hiding in darkness. He does not storm battlefields with flaming swords or command armies through fear alone.

Noah’s power comes from something far more subtle.

Reminding others of laws or traditions, teaching the deep working of ancient scrolls and long-lost prophecies, Noah shapes perception itself.

He understands people.

More specifically, he understands weakness. Fear. Dependency. The longing people have to be told what to believe and what choices to make. Where some leaders inspire freedom, Noah inspires obedience. He wraps authority in scripture, ritual, and certainty until questioning him feels almost…sinful.

Those around him often mistake intelligence for wisdom.

Father Noah is highly educated in scripture, prophecy, church law, and the historical fears of the gnome people. He knows how to speak carefully…how to threaten without sounding threatening. He can comfort a grieving mother while quietly manipulating political outcomes behind closed doors. He can preach mercy publicly while crushing opposition privately beneath the machinery of doctrine and guilt.

And perhaps the most unsettling thing about him?

He genuinely believes most people are incapable of governing themselves.

Somewhere along the path of faith and leadership, Noah stopped seeing the people around him as souls to shepherd and began seeing them as resources to organize.

Pieces to move.
Crowds to steer.
Problems to contain.

That corruption did not happen overnight.

Like many dangerous men, Father Noah likely began with conviction. But conviction hardened into superiority. Superiority became contempt. Contempt became manipulation. And manipulation eventually became power.

The Church itself sits in constant tension with the governmental powers of the gnomes, each faction struggling for influence and control over Clockwork City. Noah understands this political battlefield intimately.

He knows alliances matter.
Fear matters.
Public image matters.

Truth?

Truth is negotiable.

Especially when prophecy enters the conversation.

One of the most important prophetic figures in Chronicles of a Hero is the Gnolaum. A promised individual tied deeply to the future of the gnome people. Rumors of the Gnolaum threaten established power because prophecy has a dangerous habit of awakening hope.

And hope is difficult to control.

This is where you may see Father Noah’s intent beneath the polished exterior.

Because if the prophecies are real…

If the hero truly exists…
If the gnome people are destined for something greater than the fearful existence they have accepted…

Then Noah’s authority may be questioned.

From the view of this gnome historian, I think that possibility unnerves him. Not because he openly serves evil, but because he cannot tolerate losing control over the world he spent decades shaping. Every rumor, every whisper, every ancient prophecy must pass through filters he controls.

Interpretations become weapons.
Doubt becomes policy.
Faith becomes leverage.

Father Noah is not evil because he enjoys destruction.
He is evil because he has convinced himself that some lives matter less than others.

That some sacrifices are acceptable.
That control is preferable to uncertainty.
And history…both fictional and real…is filled with gnomes who believed the same thing.

If you wait, and watch,…and look closely enough…you may see something.

The corruption of institutions, authority,…and moral certainty unchecked by compassion.

Because eventually, every tree bears fruit.

And over time, Father Noah’s fruit may reveal exactly what kind of gnome he truly is.

-Höbin

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We are so back.

4 in the morning, two pages of notes, and I am genuinely excited to be here with you.

First — welcome.

We had 19 new subscribers join this community last week!

WOW.

Probably the most in a single week we’ve ever seen.

So I want to say good morning to , , , , cgonnelle, , cstoddard, , j.butterfield, , (paid supporter - THANK YOU), , (paid supporter - THANK YOU), , kavitajsus, tim.narey, Where I Break Open, , and .

Welcome, all of you.
I’m so glad you’re here.

• Life of Fiction is now being read in 41 states and 41 countries. That’s not nothing. That’s pretty remarkable for a small community of the best people on Substack.

• A quick note to those who only put their email in — no name. I see you. I love you. My readers have always been 90% lurkers, the sweetest people who’ll email me personally but don’t show themselves online. That’s fine. But at least tell me your name so I can say good morning properly.

Mother’s Day Adventure at Walmart

So yesterday I went on a mission with Roman (11) and Ruby (7, going on 45). The kids wanted to do something for their mom and their grandma, who lives with us. I don’t usually shop on Sundays, but they had their own money saved and big hearts, so off we went.

• They wanted to buy the whole store. We had a talk. Pool your money, agree on something, no arguments, and older doesn’t mean you get to decide, Roman.

• In about seven seconds flat they both gravitated to the same big gorgeous bouquet — yellow roses with deep orange-red fading on the edges. They had just enough money between them. I offered to pay. They said no. I was so proud I didn’t know what to do with myself.

• Then we found a teddy bear bigger than Ruby. Kathy loves teddy bears — last one she got was before Roman was born. So, yeah. We found one.

• Grandma’s obsession is turtles. Hundreds of them. Every kind, porcelain to lawn ornaments. We hunted the whole store. Finally found one and a short buff guy who looked like an older biker, climbed the shelves, fell off the shelves, grabbed it by the head, handed it to Ruby. Perfect dad-lesson delivered by a stranger.

• Ruby picked a card for Grandma that made her cry. Roman picked a card for his mom — she laughed out loud. I kept my name off both cards. This was from those two kids. They got all the credit. As it should be.

Happy Mother’s Day. That includes the single dads out there carrying both roles. I see you too.

Photos and My Sister

Anyone else getting bombarded by Dropbox Plus and Apple Cloud upgrade emails? It got me thinking.

• We just bought cameras for kids going on school trips and graduation outings. I told them how lucky they are — when I was young, you had 24 exposures on a roll of film, had to drive to a little kiosk that was barely big enough to stand in, wait three days, and then find out your thumb was in the way the whole time.

• My sister Michal Ann visited from Washington this week. She takes pictures I actually want to look at. Everyone was laughing, kids were crawling over Aunt Michal Ann, grandson Tossie was sitting on his mom’s lap making the wildest expressions. Turns out my daughter Wynnie was making faces at him and he was copying her.

  

• We also got one of my kids a Polaroid. The new mini kind. I’m telling you right now, the film is expensive and the photos are the size of a postage stamp. Should’ve just bought digital and printed at Walmart.

My Community Right Now

Small farming town, maybe a thousand people. And I need to say again…I have the best neighbors in the world.

• There’s a measles outbreak moving through our community right now. A particular strain that can cause severe light sensitivity…some kids have been kept in dark basements for days because light exposure could damage their vision. Whole families getting hit like a wave.

• When moms get sick, who takes care of everyone? Moms. And our moms are down too. What I’ve been hearing from neighbors is that other women in this community…wives, mothers themselves…are going house to house, sitting up through the night, caring for sick children and exhausted families. More than once. Quietly. Nobody asking for credit.

• My wife wants to help but we’re holding back because one of our daughters is close to having a baby, and this strain of measles carries serious risks at her stage of pregnancy. So we wait. And we’re grateful.

I grew up in California.
Most of my neighbors there were not kind people.

I moved here and I haven’t met a single person in this town I don’t like.
Not one.
My two closest friends both live within three blocks.
That doesn’t happen by accident.

I’m very blessed and I know it.

What’s Coming This Week

I owe you an apology.

Last week’s cover said Chronicles of a Hero was restarting May 8th. I misspoke — it was supposed to be this Friday. I couldn’t make it happen on that date, and saying something and not following through is not my character. Some of you told me to say “oops” and move on.

So: oops.

Here’s what this week actually looks like:

• Tuesday — Lore

• Wednesday — Artwork / Speed Drawing (first one in a while, I’ve missed it)

• Friday — Chronicles of a Hero chapters restart

The Life of Fiction Podcast is also coming back.
We stopped at episode 64.

Life hit hard and I took time to figure out what the show actually needs to be.

I think you’re going to love it.

I’m not telling you what it is yet because I have a plan and plans need to be built before they’re announced.

A Question for You — Audio

I’ve had a lot of requests for Chronicles audiobooks.
I hear you.

Hiram, I know you drive a truck. A lot of you are listening through Substack’s AI voice and it’s mangling character names and pronunciation.

Here’s my question:
I don’t have a studio, and I don’t have unlimited time. But I could do casual readings — me, live, no heavy editing, probably a few stumbles.

Real.

If that’s better to you than the AI voice, I’ll make it happen.
Let me know in the comments.

Hiram, I especially want to hear from you.

One Last Thing — Truly Found Grandpa on YouTube

My granddaughter Truly dug up old footage of me on YouTube from my Twitch days.

Truly found those old videos and started copying me while I drew. My daughter saved the drawings. I got Truly’s versions of what I was making on screen.

That’s it.
That’s the whole thing.
That’s a good week right there.

Thank you for being part of this community.
I’ve got surprises…things I genuinely want to tell you right now…but you’ll have to wait.

Have a great week.

You are MORE than you THINK you are!

Until Next Time,

Jaime *back-in-the-saddle* Buckley

P.S. — If you’re a writer and you’re new here, check the links below. Anne from Tell Me a Mystery runs a weekly writing stream where we hang out, visit for an hour, and do writing sprints. It’s low-key and it’s good.

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Treat Yourself or Someone You Love...

Want to contribute, but don’t want to do it through a paid subscription? Why not consider helping Jaime with supplies or gear to keep LoF going? Or maybe send him a treat for all his hard work (Coke Zero, yum)? He keeps a public list of what he’s saving up for…

LoF 'Daily Use& Saving Up For' List

Remember:

MONDAY & WEDNESDAY mornings at 9am Pacific, ’s Ann Kimbrough, will encourage you, make you smile, and give you that much-needed nudge to accomplish your weekly writing progress!!

Join The Sprint!

Dang it. I lost my 4’ Yoda doll.

Seriously. I had an inflatable Yoda I would put out front of the house today, and I could not find it in storage…so that’s a blown year.

Dang it.

Well regardless….

…AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY to !

Been a lot of birthdays this month already!

First Ruby, then Wynnie, Joseph, my brother Jonathan is the 13th, and mine is on the 27th. There are more int he family….but I forgot what they dates are. I believe we have a May 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 13 (x2), 14, 18, 21, 23,...and then mine, 27th.

That’s between my wife and kids, and my brothers and sisters and their kids…

Wow…I think May is our busiest birthday month of the year.

WooHOO!

My Question About Referral Prizes

Seriously, what digital item could I create that you would share Life of Fiction to get your hands on? Let me know!!

I want to make them digital gifts, so I can automate the process and make sure you GET the gifts via Substack and we don’t have to rely on me remembering (embarrassed grin).

Let me explain the choices in more detail:

• Exclusive Chronicles novella (never sold, 10k+ words, bridges book)

• Complete character art collection (every main character, drawn by me, in color, high-res)

• Full digital product bundle ($200+ value: all activity packs, curriculum guides, printables)

• Executive producer credit in next Chronicles project (book, game, or music album)

• Name a major recurring character in a Book (credited in acknowledgments)

I’m thinking about the tiers being 5, 15 and 50 referrals.

If you can think of something else you’d prefer, let me know in the comments. I’ll consider anything reasonable…or slightly unreasonable.

(grin)

You are MORE than you THINK you are!

Until Next Time,

Jaime *the-NON-Orca-swimmer* Buckley

Leave a comment

Treat Yourself or Someone You Love...

Want to contribute, but don’t want to do it through a paid subscription? Why not consider helping Jaime with supplies or gear to keep LoF going? Or maybe send him a treat for all his hard work (Coke Zero, yum)? He keeps a public list of what he’s saving up for…

LoF 'Daily Use& Saving Up For' List

Remember:

MONDAY & WEDNESDAY mornings at 9am Pacific, ’s Ann Kimbrough, will encourage you, make you smile, and give you that much-needed nudge to accomplish your weekly writing progress!!

Join The Sprint!

The day finally arrived.

For those of you who know me, you know children are my life.

I’m not a good man.
I’m not a nice man.

My life was saved when I met my darling wife.
I kiss the water she walks on.
She also hates it when I say it…but she doesn’t read my Substack, so…
Neener.

As much as I love being a husband,…nothing compares to being a father.

Nothing.

I became a professional because of my kids.
I tell stories because of my kids.
I’ve willingly gone through hell multiple times for my kids.
I’m on Substack because of my kids.

Ruby is my baby.
Our last child.
Number 13.
She came last…because if she was born first, she would be an only child.

At the same time, I think she’s the child I deserve.

Ruby turned seven today.
Seven, going on 45.
Powerful brain, tender heart.
Dishes out sarcasm like a veteran.
(It’s the Buckley love-language)

Why am I telling you all this?

Because for some reason today, I was reminded of who I am, what I believe, and the conviction of why Life of Fiction exists.

…it’s about the children.
Mine.
Yours.

All of the children.
Everywhere.

Thank you, Ruby.
For reminding me about why being a dad & storyteller is so important.
For reminding me that being disagreeable in public, to be the dad you need…is the right path.
For telling me I’m “the cool dad”, even when I don’t feel it.
For…being you.

Happy Birthday