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Belief Part 5
(Photo by Karolina Grabowska) The inside of the warehouse was brightly illuminated and the furnishings were minimal. There were no internal walls or other dividers that could provide any sort of privacy. A pair of open-air latrines sat in the far corner along with a solitary water spigot. In the center of the warehouse were…
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Belief Part 4
(Photo by NASA) There was something about being in full dress uniform that made other people pay just that much more attention to you. There weren’t many instances that warranted the full-dress uniform and so it most sat unused in her wardrobe. Pulling it out and laying it flat on the table before her was…
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Belief Part 3
(Photo by Melissa Mayes) Insef was a somewhat unique world, as far as habitable planets were concerned. Its rotation was such that one side always faced the star it orbited. That sort of orbit tended to make the star-facing side unbearably hot with the back side of the planet perpetually frozen. Insef, however, was far…
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Belief Part 2
The Cyph wasn’t a terribly large ship, certainly not the largest that Fas had been on, but nonetheless was large enough to transport her battalion while not crowding out the Cyph’s crew. Of course, the vast majority of Fas’s soldiers were in a magically induced stasis. All one thousand of her Sparks were kept in…
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Belief Part 1
(Photo by David Kopacz) For the past several hours, Conflagrator Fas had sat alone in her chambers staring at the cold steel wall before her. The room was unadorned, holding only the essentials. Her bed was currently tucked into the wall beside which was her desk and computer terminal. The only chair in the room…
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Reflections on Roots
(Photo by Ave Calvar Martinez) In my initial concept for “Roots”, Syn and Pierce were children from a daycare who were going on a make-believe adventure that would stray into the real world as they tried to escape from the daycare facility. As I worked out the plot points I found myself less and less…
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Roots Part 8
(Photo by Marta Wave) Two days had passed since Syn fled the valley and she was reasonably certain that she’d gone far enough that she’d escaped the patrol’s search area. That was the good news. The bad news was that her entire abdomen felt as though it were on fire. Waves of nausea were common,…
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Roots Part 7
(Photo by Pixabay) It was a relief when Syn found the fields her mom had been tending. It was difficult at first to see the signs of cultivation since her mom had, understandably, wanted to avoid being noticed. The fields looked as though they were growing wild but as soon as Syn ducked her head…
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Roots Part 6
(Photo by Tom Fisk) Consciousness was slow to return to Syn as she felt herself fading in and out of lucidity. Each time she felt herself coming back around it was as though heavy weights were strapped all over her body and it was only with incredible effort that she ever managed to shift her…
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Roots Part 5
(Photo by Nishant Aneja) When Syn awoke it took her several minutes before she could hold onto her thoughts long enough to begin remembering what all had happened. Once her memories returned, however, so did the pain. Her entire stomach felt as though it were on fire with the worst of it centered on where…
