“Divining Guidance”

An excerpt from chapter 5 of The Alchemist's Folly, the final installment in a Pure Steam trilogy of novellas due out in the not-too-distant (one would hope) future! Read book 1 here.

* * * * *

The descent into the salt mine consumed nearly an hour aboard a groaning, iron-caged hoist that shuddered violently against the timbered walls of the vertical shaft. As the drop cable unspooled into the dark, the stifling heat of the Rauschite surface surrendered to a dead, dry chill that tasted of ancient mineral oceans. Two thousand feet beneath the sunlit valleys, the air grew so dense with pulverized salt that every breath left a crusted rind upon the tongue and set the eyes to watering.

When the hoist finally slammed onto its wooden bumpers, the lanterns held by Dresden’s accompanying guards carved pale yellow cones through a realm of stark, crystalline white.

They stood in a gargantuan subterranean hall, unearthing a massive salt dome that stretched for miles beneath the valley floor. Vast pillars of halite—translucent, white, and veins of deep arterial pink—supported a vaulted ceiling so high that the darkness swallowed it whole. Towering halite crystal formations, sharp as glass and as wide as ancient redwoods, erupted from the floor at jagged angles, catching the lantern light and fracturing it into a dazzling web of geometric spears.

“Cattledung,” Lyn whispered, her voice deadened instantly by the acoustic absorbency of the salt walls. She pulled her wool coat tighter and sneezed into her elbow. “It’s like being inside a frozen gut.”

“Watch your step,” Marlby warned, his dog legs clanking with a hollow, metallic ring against the slick salt floor. The iron joints groaned under the salt dust, but he pressed on, using a brass-tipped cane for balance. “One slip on these crystal spurs and you’ll leave half your hide behind.”

Bigby paid the warning no mind. He was already several paces ahead, moving like a man pulled by an invisible leash. In his hand, the alchemist’s key wasn't merely warm—it was humming at a pitch so high it made his teeth ache. A pale, copper glow pulsed beneath the metal’s burnished skin, lighting the gnome’s face in rhythmic flashes.

“It’s here,” Bigby said, his voice taut with anticipation. “The node is right under us.”

Poppy walked beside him, her steps silent and unhurried. Her eyes, wide and unnaturally dark in the cavern’s glare, reflected the rod’s copper light. “The salt remembers,” she murmured softly, her fingers tracing the edge of a massive, hexagonal crystal pillar as they passed. “It held the water before the mountains rose. It holds the weight now.”

“Poppy?” Bigby paused, casting a concerned glance at her.

“I’m clear, Bigby,” she said, though her tone remained eerie in its perfection. “The pressure here... it calms the noise. Proceed, Alchemist.”

The party rounded a colossal, leaning spire of translucent pink halite and emerged into a natural circular amphitheater at the heart of the dome. In the center of the grotto, two gargantuan salt crystals—one hanging down from the unreachable roof like an inverted mountain, the other rising from the bedrock—nearly met in the middle. The gap between their sharp, pyramidal tips was no wider than the span of a man’s hand.

“There,” Bigby breathed.

He stepped onto the raised salt dais at the center of the room. The air around the central formation vibrated with a static charge that made the hair on their arms stand up on end.

“Biggs, you sure about this?” Marlby called out, staying near the edge of the chamber with Lyn, his hand resting cautiously on his hatchet. “We’re two thousand feet under the Rauschite faith. If this place caves, they won't even need to dig our graves.”

“It won't cave,” Bigby said, though sweat beaded on his forehead despite the cold. He held up the bronzed rod. The key was almost too hot to hold now, radiant with an intense, golden-orange light that cast long, dancing shadows across the crystal walls. “The charge is full. It needs to discharge to balance with the node.”

Bigby climbed the stepped salt ledge, reached up, and carefully inserted the bronzed rod horizontally into the narrow gap between the twin crystal spires.

The instant the metal touched both points of salt, the key’s light flared into a blinding, white-hot flash.

A sound like a shattering bell echoed through the subterranean expanse, followed immediately by a deep, low frequency THUM.

The energy stored within the rod poured out in a visible, rippling wave of violet-and-copper force. The light raced through the crystalline lattice of the twin spires, branching out into the floor, the walls, and the ceiling like living, luminous roots.

Then, the earth ground its teeth.

“Hold fast!” Lyn shouted, grabbing Marlby’s arm as the floor lurked beneath them.

With a series of deafening, crystalline cracks—like thousands of glass sheets snapping at once—the entire cavern began to rearrange itself. The massive salt formations didn't fracture or collapse; instead, they began to slide and rotate along smooth, perfectly geometric planes.

Huge hexagonal pillars turned in place like massive stone dials. The floor beneath their feet shifted in concentric rings, the inner circle rotating clockwise while the outer ring spun counter-clockwise. High above, the ceiling’s faceted vault slid along hidden, interlocking seams, altering the room's geometry in a smooth, mechanical choreography.

The sound was immense—a roar of grinding mineral and compressed air—yet entirely controlled. It was the movement of a titanically complex lock, buried deep in the mantle of the world, responding to its key.

As quickly as it had begun, the movement ground to a halt with a heavy, satisfying CLACK that reverberated through the soles of their boots.

Silence returned to the salt cavern, heavy and absolute.

The bronzed rod, now completely drained of its light and cool to the touch, clattered against the salt floor as the gap between the spires widened by several inches.

Bigby stood frozen on the dais, panting, his eyes wide as he looked around. The cavern was transformed. The jagged, chaotic array of crystal spires had aligned into neat, radial avenues pointing outward from the central chamber, revealing a dark, perfectly square passageway cut into the far wall that had previously been hidden behind thousands of tons of solid salt.

He knelt and picked up the key. It felt light, empty, and dormant once more.

“Brand me a Brelonite…” Bigby whispered.

Lyn let out a long breath, her hands still trembling as she uncurled them from Marlby’s coat. “Well, Biggs … you certainly know how to turn a room around.”

Poppy stepped forward onto the newly aligned floor, looking down the dark, revealed passageway. She didn't look frightened or disoriented. A quiet, knowing smile touched her lips as she turned back to Bigby.

“One step closer,” Poppy said softly. “The Machine turns.”

“Dresden’s Crossing: Goeth(ite) Yonder, And Free Thy Fortune O Ye Finders o’ the Hidden!”

An excerpt from chapter 3 of The Alchemist's Folly, the final installment in a Pure Steam trilogy of novellas due out in the not-too-distant (one would hope) future! Read book 1 here.

* * * * *

“Shoot, Olson!” the broad-shouldered, mustachioed man in the grey calvary coat bellowed. “Brand me a shave tail if’n I haven’t tasted a finer vintage this side o’ the Heartwater!”

The thin-nosed, bristle chin-bearded dwarf in workman’s leathers and a hard jack smirked at his honored drinking companion. “‘Tain’t a problem, my flouncy tallman friend,” he said. “What with the company you keep.” He lifted his fluted glass to the others assembled in the courtyard of the stately hachenda crowning a hill at the center of town. The white clay-and-straw brick fortified home played guest to over three dozen gathered under the strung ambience of gas-lamps and the din of suppertime revelry. Dusk clawed at the sky leaving streaks of orange and pink as a ‘V’ of geese honked overhead, winging their way back north after the long winter.

“Anything less than legendary hospitality and I’d have reason to shoot ya dead where ya stand, friend dwarf!” Landing ribbed with a wink and a nod.

The dwarf unleashed a nasally laugh at the jest as Landing swept a hand toward them and four guests stepped up to join them on the low dais before the assembly. Other guests continued to hobnob and graze on the silver-plate wielded fare: all finger foods of the breaded crawdad and candied yam variety. A long table on the dais behind them sat strewn with steaming soup vats, whole legs, and flanks, and heads of animals on platters, plates topped with many-layered gelatinous desserts, and a small crystal fountain that spewed forth continuous waterfalls of peach-colored liquor.

“Mister Dresden,” Landing began with a flourish. “Let me introduce you to some special guests this evenin’. Not all the way—like I came—but clear across from Crowning Junction by way of Savig airship! May I present Misters Edgar Marlby and Bigby Dolan, ‘longside Madams Penelope Marshall and Annalyn Farlee. Sons and daughters of the good ole FSU!”

Lyn reached back to scratch her butt and make a face as much at Landing’s comment as to relieve herself of the bunching her new sapphire dress caused.

Marlby and Bigby, too, were dudded up in finer clothes and new boots. Poppy wore her usual tasteful attire.

“Welcome to my home,” the dwarf said. “Olson Dresden. This be the community of our making.”

“Why it’s just a real pleasure, Mr. Dresden,” Marlby said, taking the dwarf’s hand. “Meeting you both, that is!” Marlby turned and took Landing by the other hand, turning the three of them into a pretzel of affectation.

“Alright, boy, alright!” Landing said, patting Marlby on the shoulder. In truth, Landing wasn’t much older than Marlby, and was even a few years Bigby’s junior—owing to Bigby’s gnomish blood—but everyone looked and sounded younger who stood in that man’s sights.

“A pleasure to meet you both,” Poppy said, tilting her head to their hosts in turn. “Art, and Olson.”

“First name basis, eh?” Dresden perked. “Like her already.”

Poppy smiled prettily.

“This is about as fine a stay as we’ve enjoyed outside of back home,” Bigby said.

“And whereabouts would you call home, Mr. Dolan?” Landing said.

Somehow, Landing’s words made Bigby have to shake off a momentary echo of dread before he responded. “Never much had the roots to put down for a home, Mr. Landing. I tend to wander.”

“You’ve wandered far afield from friendly confines, Folk friend,” Dresden stated. “The Disputed don’t play kind to those unfamiliar.” Dresden looked down at Marlby’s legs tellingly.

“And don’t pay him no mind,” Landing chuckled. “He’d be happier still if the kingdom’s borders were a few miles west as east of him.” Landing made reference to the fact that Dresden’s Crossing sat closer to the unsettled middle country of the continent than many other locales in Rausch, the kingdom they now inhabited.

“Not closer than Holy Faith,” Dresden corrected. “Or did all that travel addle your sense of time and space?” the dwarf joked.

“Curious thing that you would bring up matters of time and space and mention of that Rauschite bordertown,” Bigby said. “The very one which by your labors you intend to bridge the Disputed with a railroad, if I’m not mistaken, Mr. Landing? Mr. Dresden?”

“Far as Gom Shao, if the fates align,” Landing confirmed.

“That’s what we came to learn, as well,” Bigby said, nodding to Marlby. “But you won’t be getting there without us.”

Dresden shot Landing a look.

“I see they caught your attention like they caught mine,” Landing confessed.

Dresden smirked. “Not the most public place to be making threats, but I’ll remind you—”

“Not a threat,” Bigby said. “A promise. And this.” He slid the bronzed rod out from the rigid roll of fabric on the dickey that sat bunched under his chin. The alchemist’s key seemed to buzz with a bronze halo of light that limned all who surrounded it with a soft glow separate and apart from the party ambience.

“What’s that?” Dresden asked, nonplussed.

“A key to locked locales that make a bridge across time and space to where you need to go,” Bigby alluded. “Alchemy is my trade. I know now what this rod can do. It’s taken me halfway across Ullera to figure it out, at the expense of nearly all our resources and this good man’s legs.” Marlby shifted at Bigby’s side. “But we can’t continue to do this on our own. We need your sponsorship and the protection your expedition will provide. In return, we’ll provide you a legitimate cover story, and equal shares in anything we discover through this. We just ask that you permit us the freedom to do all the discovering we can along the way.”

The two rich “entrepioneers” looked mildly amused.

“What’s your story, alchemist?” Dresden said.

Lyn patted Bigby’s chin and waltzed over to the table where the food sat and began picking at the assembled fare.

Bigby gestured to Poppy.

“We are seekers on a pilgrimage to the holy lands,” she said, glowing and confident at every word. “The Godhead has summoned us here to help strengthen the homeland. By laying new rail and discovering the sacred places here that call to us, we ensure that others too will come to know the truth and commune more closely with the Godhead.”

“Godhead. You speak of the hunk o’ statuary the Brelonites bow down and pray to?” Landing ventured.

Dresden nodded for them. “The very same that elves and dwarves long ago wrought for their own purposes. Pfah!” he spat and shrugged at the notion.

“And, if the legends are to be believed, the very same that dragons enchanted before they left these lands,” Bigby added.

“We are not religious men,” Landing said. “We are men of action. And science.”

“As am I!” Bigby agreed. “But this story will appeal to the throne’s sensibilities, if ever it gets back to them! You won’t curry favor in Rausch proudly denouncing all they hold dear. This way you can hide your rail in plain sight and Rausch will tend to see it the way we sell it: a vehicle to take the good news into heathen lands!”

“People don’t tend to do much of anything ya like,” Dresden reminded, shaking his head at Landing.

Landing stared at what Bigby held in his hands. “And this here rod? How’s it factor into all this?” he said, extending his open hand to the gnome.

Bigby paused, then laid the alchemist’s key in Landing’s palm. “If you’re willing, tomorrow morning, we’ll accompany you to a place not far—maybe 20 miles or less—where I can show you.”

Bigby let go of the rod and it immediately dimmed to nothing in Landing’s hands.

Everyone staring at the rod flinched, giving Bigby a screwy glance.

“I didn’t know that either, until recently,” Bigby said, eyeing the rod. “This is the first time it’s been out of my reach since,” he looked up at Poppy, “…since I was given this key. It’s no thing of magic. But it is still a thing of mystery. A mystery, too, I would share you with, dear hosts, if you would have us?”

Landing and Dresden took deep, steadying breaths simultaneously.

Landing chewed his tongue and quirked his brow at his dwarven business partner.

“It’s been awhile since something truly unanticipated and intriguing has crossed my table,” Dresden said. “Be ready an hour after dawn. I’ll arrange the away party to join us. Until then,” he added at length, sweeping an arm out in front of him, “please, enjoy!”

"Mister Polk Edgewater and The Miracle of His Soiled-Breath Solvaway"

Here's the opening scene to chapter 2 in our upcoming Pure Steam tie-in novella, The Alchemist's Gambit. Get book 1 here!

* * * * *

Felicia Dolloway sat comfortably across from her short wavy-haired companion on the opposing divan, purple trails of smoke crisscrossing her painted face as she removed the hookah stem from her pert pink mouth.

“So, tell me, Mister Edgewater,” Felicia purred, fingering the hookah stem like a flute. “What manner of throat-sweet cure-all would you have in mind for my so dearly afflicted?”

“Dearly afflicted?” Edgewater said, smiling. “If I’m not a two-bit horse salesman, you led me to believe this was nothing other than a personal call!”

“Why, it is, Mister E! But you wouldn’t have thought such a thing as that was needed on me, now, would you?” Felicia punctuated her playfulness by blowing a line of her purple-smoke-tainted-breath into Edgewater’s face.

The pneumatic water pipe gurgled as Mr. E hiccoughed and licked his lips dry of the sickly-sweet flavored tobacco that nested in the basin of the communal smoking apparatus. The public parlor in the one flophouse in Rooter’s Station that attracted all manner of customers was particularly busy today. More than ten percent of the trading and supply depot’s population, numbering in the low hundreds, could easily be found here on any given occasion, day or night, and at least twice that number were in attendance. A bed of dry goods and Ulleran sundries had just come in on the 2:05 out of Camp Destiny, and the parlor attendants were foppishly decked in some of the finest fashions out of Esteem, while supping on sumptuous Venuvian hand pastries. Each couple and small group kept to their own whispered-nothings and private intrigues by the curtained booths that ringed the parlor floor.

“Hardly, madame,” Edgewater replied at length, scratching his head. “Your sugary vapors shame even the most haughty women of Keystone.”

Felicia beamed. “How you talk!”

“It’s true,” he said. “And, if you have serious need of my services, true, too, are the claims that I make.”

“And when can you deliver, my smart little hairfoot?” Felicia reached across the hookah stand between them and rustled his hair.

“Posthaste!” Edgewater’s eyes fluttered at the rake of her fingers on his scalp. “Course, I’ve been called worse, madame. And better besides.”

“Oh, beg my pardons!” Felicia fumbled her words and her hookah stem. “I … me … well, you must be one o’ them Folks, now, ain’t ya!”

“The Folk,” Edgewater corrected. “But gnomes and halflings, we must all look alike.” A glass bottle broke somewhere to Edgewater’s left, and he was reminded just how careless and provincial the folk—his race aside—around here were. Careless was fitting here in the Disputed Lands, even if this territory belonged to no province or state in particular, but Rooter’s Station still catered to “back east” sensibilities, and this particular gnome bargained that a name like Edgewater, “Professional Hygienist and Traveling Amateur Genealogist,” would go unnoticed in a place like this. Careless and provincial enough, at least, he hoped.

“Next you’re gonna tell me your name’s not even Edgewater,” Felicia joked.

He laughed nervously. Maybe he shouldn’t have corrected her, after all. Better to leave lying dogs to rest.

Edgewater rose from his seat. “Shall we?” he indicated, lifting a doctor’s folding medicine case at his feet.

“Most certainly, Mr. E!”

Edgewater bowed as she left their smoky corner behind, taking a moment to surreptitiously spy the room for hidden dangers. Following in Felicia’s wake, he was content that everything was safe for the moment.

A knowing pair of eyes or two followed the stunning Felicia Dolloway, aka “Felly Doll,” semi-secret confidant and plaything of the notorious gang boss Rooter Baud, local smuggler and part-time railway saboteur—privately wanted on bounty boards posted up and down the border by companies B&S and South Settler both. She led her gnome companion behind a standing partition, etched in Elven designs, and through a sliding wall behind it. Problem was, poor Mr. Edgewater, while he knew of Rooter Baud’s reputation as a dangerous heavy and Miss Dolloway’s as a flowering socialite, hadn’t put the two of them together, as judging by her genteel nature, but was willing to risk being seen with her for the knowledge she was rumored to have.

The grand hoax of “Mr. Edgewater’s Soiled-Breath Solvaway” had taken Bigby Dolan little more than a day to propagate, which he was thankful for, given that Marlby, long his best friend and now trusted guide across the Disputed, had given them until sundown to rest up before the next leg of their cross-country dodge commenced. The three of them, Poppy included, had resolved that local authorities back in Harmonia were still tongue-tied and hand-tied, if not outright hog-tied, over how to figure out what had happened on the banks of the Heartwater that fateful afternoon more than ten days ago. The day he and Poppy, aided and abetted by Marlby, had left a dead federal agent, dubbed “widowmen” by those outside the government—of which Poppy was a rogue sort—burnt to a crisp in the bottom of their ditched getaway boat. It had been a week and then some of hard trekking and sleeping in empty logs and badger dens. Rooter’s Station was the first real taste of back-home they had afforded themselves, having skipped other easier-to-get-at forts, ranches, and fuel depots, since.

The lights went out as the sliding wall closed behind them.

“Take my hand, now, Mr. Edgewater,” Felicia said. “Where we’re going, there be no lights to see by.”

Mr. Edgewater—Bigby—did as he was bid, and felt his way up the unseen stairs as she led them on.

“I say, Ms. Dolloway?” Bigby whispered.

“Call me, ‘Felly’,” she said.

“Uh, yes. Felly. Felly? I seem to be short on memory, as it serves, but did we discuss my payment at all?”

“Why, no, Mr. E. We did not. In most dealings round these parts, though, payment isn’t rendered or even bandied about until a taste of the services to be bought are full and well proved authentic.”

“Naturally, Ms., err, Felloooo,” he stumbled, toe catching a step, “but … I, er, we ought to have some idea, hadn’t we?”

“We, Mr. E? Why, I thought t’was just you and I.”

"It is!" Bigby said a bit too lively, his accent dropping. "Of course, it is."

“Well, what did you have in mind, Mr. Edgewater?” Felly asked. “Or, was the hookah I treated you to not to your liking?”

“Not at all,” he said, regaining his composure as they reached the landing and a sliver of outdoor light beamed from beneath the door up ahead. “I’s just keen on hearing what you might know about local legends and such. I’m a collector as it were; fancy myself a raconteur of odd stories and personas. I’s curious, is all, what you’d be willing to share about a man called Merylki Bindealer?”

“The Warlock In The Warrens?” Felly said, as if for the first time. “I ain’t ever heard of no ‘Bindealer,’ but I heard a thing or two about Merylki and his last resting place.” She opened the door at the top of the landing to reveal an open-air rooftop patio ringed by a trellis crawling in ivy. A man in loose fitting overalls, his back to the opening door, swept at the patio deck with a long-handled, straw-bottom broom.

“He’s dead?” Bigby said, trying not to sound shocked. “I thought—”

“Last known resting place,” Felly corrected. “They say he’s bewitched and all. Some kind of haunt or spook. Been dead or kilt a dozen times or more, they say.”

“They do now, do they?” Bigby said, feigning disinterest.

Felly paused to regard the groundskeeper, then turned to Bigby, still holding his hand. “Now then, you can lay out your wares over yonder on that bench, and I can send this here feller to fetch your client, my boyfriend.”

Bigby and the groundskeeper both sounded in unison. “Boyfriend?”

Felly and Bigby looked to the groundskeeper as he faced them. The man with the broom wore a twisted grin like the cruel cut left by a vengeful knife, and Bigby saw trouble in his eyes.

“Whutchu doin’ here?” Felly said, mildly surprised, and cocked her body just so as she placed the back of her other hand on her hip.

“Cleanin’ house,” the broom man said.

Bigby stared at the man’s crooked grin and held his breath. Then someone kicked the patio door shut behind them.

Everyone on the patio looked up to see a pudgy, long-tongued brute covered in brown scales, leg a-dangling down from atop the stairwell’s roof against the closed door, and his two companions—one a wily looking young human and the other a barechested, ink-skinned half-elf, equal shares of sinister looks about them—lazing on the prowl.

“Cleaning? Shoot!” Felly said. “Get your sorry butts downstairs and fetch my beau!”

“Fetch fetches,” Crooked Grin said. “Boss keeps me around just for the kill.”

“There ain’t nothing here for you to kill,” Felly said matter-of-factly. “Now, git!”

Crooked looked at Bigby and sneered. “Who’s hand you holdin’, runt?”

Bigby looked at his own hand in Felly’s and tried to let go, but she held on.

“Don’t you go lookin’ at him, you jumpin’ fresh tumbleweed!” Felly leaned into her words. “D’you hear me! Go get, Rooter. I got a present for him.”

Crooked scoffed. “What, this?” he indicated Bigby with his broom. “What piece o’ tard he gonna give you for what, Felly Doll?”

“Just you nev-uh-mind,” she said saucily. “I’s gonna send him to Standing Elk when he’s a-finished.”

“Ho! Ain’t that right?” Crooked looked taken aback. “To do what?”

“He’s looking for somebody!” Felly said.

Bigby felt increasingly alarmed, and began to plot an escape route over the nearby trellis.

Crooked sensed the tension and reached out to grab Bigby by the shirt sleeve. “Who you looking for, stranger?”

Bigby jerked back, more in response to the stink of Crooked Grin’s breath, and felt his jaw tighten. “Why … you, good sir!” He gingerly opened the medicine case and slipped his fingers inside. “I have just the tonic for you! An oral treatment, really. If it serves to prove my claims to our lady here, I’d like you to test some!” Bigby finished with a wave of his hand as it emerged from the case and dashed a bottle of fizzy green liquid in the crook’s open mouth and eyes.

Crooked let out an awful yell as he reared back, dropped the broom, and clawed his face with one hand while reaching into his overalls with the other.

Felly yelped, too, surprised by Edgewater’s sudden move, and weakly leapt between them, flagging both hands, to halt any further aggression.

At their backs, Fat Snout and the other two hopped up ready to pounce.

Crooked was faster than anyone else, however, and ripped a knife from inside his clothes before plunging it blindly, aiming low at Bigby’s neck or face level, into the air ahead of him. Felly’s body verily moved into Crooked’s thrust as the knife buried itself into her loins. He growled triumphantly, and a choked gasp escaped her throat and her features strained.

Everyone except Crooked froze, and as he wiped his vision clear, blinking through a red haze, he, too, saw what he had done. Felly’s blood ran warm over his fist.

Bigby grimaced horribly, but bolted an instant later and scrambled up the trellis to his right after launching his now closed folding case over the side ahead of him.

Felly slumped to the floor with a quiet whimper, and Bigby looked back a second too long to watch her fall.

Fat Snout launched himself off the ledge above the stairwell and tackled Bigby bodily against the trellis, which promptly gave way and folded outward around the rooftop patio’s perimeter like a row of dominoes. The two of them rolled in each other arms, sliding along the rooftop’s tiled awning, as clay tiles spat loose from the weight and shattered on the ground two flights below. Streetside pedestrians gawked in stunned wonder at the fray.

Crooked’s other two henchmen lowered themselves down as Crooked himself stepped over to wrangle the dangling duo, slapping a bloody hand over Bigby’s gripping the rooftop’s edge.

“MURDERER!” Crooked Grin cried. He dragged Bigby to safety and held him in close. “We’ll get you to Standing Elk, murderer,” he spoke harshly into Bigby’s ear. “There ain’t nothing there to find what’s already been done! ‘Cept your bones come t'morrow mornin’!” Crooked turned to look at Tattoo. “Juice this rat!”

The half-elf produced a rusty syringe filled with a bluish liquid and jabbed it into Bigby’s arm before depressing the plunger.

Bigby’s mouth fell open as the patio swallowed him.

The Alchemist's Run

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Introducing to you, Bigby Dolan and company in The Alchemist's Run.

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The Sword Is Only As Mighty As The Pen That Designed It (Part 4)

Penny for my thoughts?

The Sword Is Only As Mighty As The Pen That Designed It (Part 3)

The story of playtesting our homebrew RPG campaign setting, Pure Steam™.

The Sword Is Only As Mighty As The Pen That Designed It (Part 2)

OR … "Building A World With Thoughts" continued.

The Sword Is Only As Mighty As The Pen That Designed It (Part 1)

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