“Media Literacy

Posted by natechen on April 18, 2026

Ever heard of media literacy?

If not, you’re fortunate. The term is relatively new, although it apparently goes all the way back to some time in the 1930s. Part of the problem of figuring it out is that what it refers to is somewhat nebulous.

The casual observer might hear the term and assume that it refers to a collection of tools that help a person extract meaning from media. What makes media literacy so tricky is that the casual observer is correct. At the same time, they’re not.

Most people would break the phrase down to its constituent parts, beginning with “media”, which in this case clearly refers to entertainment in any medium, and “literacy,” which is the ability to understand and create the media in question.

Once upon a time it was thought that literacy developed in the same way one develops a facility for speech – through gradual exposure to writing over time. This theory is largely disproven at this point but its aftereffects are still felt. In the brief time this theory of mind existed an entire new theory of education was built on top of it and the way people were taught to read changed entirely.

At my age I remember the days of phonics. If you were like me, you were taught to read by looking at each letter in a word and assigning a sound to them. You probably said them out loud at first, to help you build the association. When you strung all the sounds together, voila! You’ve read a word.

That is not how reading is taught now.

These days, students are taught reading using a system known as “whole word comprehension” which we will refer to as the cuing method. When reading with this methodology, students look at the general shape of a group of letters. If they recognize the shape of the letters they can assign a meaning to it while if they don’t they look at the first letter of the word and guess.

This is not a joke. Here is Amanda Malone, the state literacy director of Mississippi explaining this “method” to a reporter:

Another method she mentions in this brief exchange is cuing students using pictures connected to words, which I have chosen as the term for this method overall. Neither of these methods is particularly good at creating actual literacy in students. Mississippi used to rank near the bottom of state literacy rates but, since reforms put in place by the state and carried out by Malone and her colleagues, Mississippi has shot up into the top ten states for student literacy.

All well and good, certainly, but the cuing method of teaching literacy has prevailed in schools for some time and it will take time for reforms (and the students educated by them) to spread into the broader culture. That leaves us with its shortcomings for quite some time. Assuming that the old, phonics driven method of education ever makes a complete return.

See, the cuing method is very seductive for teachers. It does something that phonics does not. When students are taught to read via cuing it makes the student entirely dependent on the teacher to figure out the meaning of every word. As Malone and the report discuss, even a simple three letter word that starts with “c” could have any number of meanings. It is teachers who shape the words. Not readers.

And they don’t just get to set the meanings of words. They can shape emotional reactions by always placing those meanings in specific contexts. This has the knock on effect of making the words feel meaningless in new contexts, even though human language is designed to be flexible enough to fit multiple contexts. However, if teachers never present specific framings of words they can make those frames feel alien and even offensive to their students.

Scale this back up to media literacy. What does it mean to be media literate?

A lot, actually.

Psychologically, people tend to structure their thoughts based on the last form of communication they’ve learned. Literacy, as previously noted, is not natural and thus tends to come very late in a person’s communication education. Unless you are a polyglot who learns numerous languages, you are probably going to construct thoughts using the literacy techniques you were taught in elementary school.

This means that modern media literacy is built on the cuing principle.

If you’ve ever tipped your toes into YouTube media criticism you’ll quickly discover that there are whole spheres of commentary that are designed to cue up framings for stories so people can understand them. We’ve actually spent the two previous weeks discussing the results of that. Yes, I believe the tendency to judge characters and stories by archetypes and genres is a direct result of the cuing principle that was used to educate readers.

This is how many people can look at two characters as radically different as Monkey D. Luffy and Rocks D. Xebec and say that they are the same. Readers are cued by the “D.” and the fact they are both pirates. So the readers lump these two characters into the same category, in spite of the massive differences in goals and methodology.

Media is a vast and expansive subject so no one group of teachers can cue audiences into how to interpret media. In fact, the aforementioned YouTube Media critics existed largely to help the cuing process. It is understanding this massive body of cues and expanding it as new media is created that makes one media literate. Not only must one know the cues, one must also know the orthodoxy. After all, cuing isn’t only done to inform the meaning of the media, it’s framed to provoke certain reactions to it. If you try to frame media in the wrong way it’s not a sign that the media may mean multiple things. It’s a sign you’re media illiterate.

It is an extremely narrow minded methodology.

That is the part that worries me the most about the cuing method of literacy. If there is a group of skills we might call “social literacy” that govern how we understand and think about the people and culture around us, and if we were to apply the cuing method in that sphere, we would not call the result enlightened thought. We would call it bigotry.

Is it a coincidence we are living in an era where this kind of short sighted prejudice, once thought a thing of the past, is making a sudden return? No, it’s not. Sadly, such things are very comforting to the heart of man. Neither is it directly a consequence of the way we are taught to read, although I am certain the cuing method of literacy doesn’t help.

By the same token, I don’t think simply taking up phonics and learning to break down words, stories and people piece by piece is a magical panacea that will counter this trend. There are evils that come about from going too far into the opposite direction as well. Ultimately, you must first start from a position of good will towards your fellow man, an understanding of the frailties of mankind and a heaping helping of divine grace before such fundamental flaws in human nature can be addressed.

However, if you’ve gotten that far and still find yourself jumping to these archetypes in all areas of life, a simple change in your method of literacy may help. At the least, it can slow down your leaping on cues long enough for you to analyze them. It will make you a better thinker and writer. Or so we can hope.

For purposes of full disclosure, my research into the literacy revolution in America is vastly incomplete. Currently I am working through a list of materials assembled by Hilary Lane. I give her full credit for assembling it and admit my own thoughts on this are influenced by hers. If you’re interested in a deeper dive into the history, methods and motives behind this change, I recommend looking through her article and picking up a few of the books she lists. It’s an enlightening experience. You can find it here:

https://www.hilarylayne.com/p/very-carefully-educated-to-be-idiots

A Question of Leadership

Posted by natechen on April 11, 2026

It’s time to talk about One Piece again.

The magic of Eiichiro Oda’s pirate epic is something truly unique, as on the surface it appears to be a fun adventure story yet when studied carefully it reveals depths of character and morals missing from most modern narratives. It’s very tempting to put the entire opus under a microscope to see just how much scrutiny it can withstand. In this way the story itself is something of a treasure hunt. Very fitting, because the reality is that One Piece is not aiming to be a landmark work of literature with ironclad morals and legendary characters.

It is aiming to be a fun adventure story about pirates looking for treasure. The rest just happens along the way.

This is something I can personally attest to, as I’ve been following Monkey D. Luffy and his crew along their adventures for some twenty years now, and I’ve found a lot of treasure over that time. Like the rubber guy himself, I love to share it with my friends. So let’s talk a little bit about the tale of Captain Rocks D Xebec and King Harald of Elbaf.

If you’re not overly familiar with One Piece, don’t worry. The story of Rocks and Harald is fairly contained. What makes them interesting is the commentary they offer on what it means to be a leader, a topic that is at the core of One Piece. On their own, these two titans did a lot to shape the world of One Piece as we know it. That alone would make them interesting characters to study. However, when we consider them in contrast to the central character of Oda’s tale we start to see some very interesting contrasts that illuminate Luffy’s leadership style in fascinating ways.

Luffy’s often repeated dream is to become King of the Pirates by discovering the eponymous One Piece, the lost treasure of the previous Pirate King, Gold Rogers. The only clue he has to this goal is Rogers’ statement that anyone looking for this treasure will have to search the whole world. So Luffy sets out to the Grand Line, the only sea route that circles the globe, gathering members for his crew along the way.

Each member of Luffy’s crew is a fascinating character in their own right. He had to win them over individually, learning who they were and breaking down the barriers that keep them from committing to his cause. The crew have dreams and goals rooted in long histories, personal ambition and deep grief they are slowly moving past. Luffy understands and values each of these people and pushes them towards their own goals while pursuing his own. It speaks volumes of him and what he values.

In contrast, Rocks D Xebec is a very careless person. He doesn’t care about his crew or what they want so long as they do what they’re told and advance his goals. He seems vaguely aware that they have things they want but we never see him consider those wants at all. He certainly didn’t do much to win them over to his cause.

The Rocks Pirates were assembled using an ancient contest known as the Davy Back Fight, where crews compete to press gang members of the opposing crew into their own ranks. Rocks doesn’t have a crew of friends and allies. He has a crew of prizes. They’re all powerful but, as you might expect of people who have been forced into working together, they’re not very friendly towards each other.

There’s only one person who Rocks seems really friendly towards and that’s Harald, who isn’t even a member of his crew!

While it’s not readily apparent at first glance, in terms of dreams and ambitions Harald is the exact opposite of Rocks. Although he is the king of a nation of literal giants, Harald is a kindly man. In spite of a wild youth, Harald came to realize that Elbaf’s reputation as a nation of violent warmongers had limited their opportunities and stunted their growth. So he sets out to reform the nation and establish diplomatic ties with the rest of the world, hoping to earn Elbaf membership in the World Government.

It might seem odd that a king seeking membership in a worldwide government would form a friendship with a famous pirate wanted by that same government. In fairness, things didn’t start that way. Rocks and Harald met in passing and traded blows but Harald proved the first man who could match Rocks in any measure. Rocks immediately realized he would need Harald’s help to achieve his goals. Yet he could not force the giant king to go along with him the way he had with the rest of his crew. So Rocks attempts friendship, instead.

Harald was never interested in joining forces with Rocks but he kept meeting Xebec when the pirate came to call. Like Rocks, Harald had no other equals of note. Perhaps he felt some kinship to the pirate captain as well. However, Harald’s dream was diplomatic in nature. The self centered behavior Rocks embodied was not something he could indulge if he hoped to achieve his own goals.

If Rocks embodies an entirely egocentric style of leadership, where he overwhelms his followers and drags them along towards his goals, Harald embodies a selfless kind of leadership. We don’t know much about how Harald went about forging his alliances with surrounding nations but he does form them. In many ways his own nature vanishes. Giants tower over others but Harald bent down to their level. Elbaf’s giants are known as warriors but Harald was a diplomat. Harald was a direct descendant of an ancient lineage that grows horns on their heads so he tore them off to distance himself from the violent reputation of that lineage.

Harald must do all this because he is entirely dependent on how others see him to achieve his own ends. Another way in which he is the opposite of Rocks.

These contrasting styles of leadership are repeatedly juxtaposed throughout Rocks’ and Harald’s story. Eventually they both spiral in ways that lead to the destruction of both characters. Rocks drags his crew to an island without explaining the dangers there and they fracture under intense pressure from the World Government. Rocks himself is killed and the others flee in disarray.

Harald never finds the reconciliation he hoped for, only ever greater demands from the World Government. Eventually, his son is forced to kill him to keep the whole nation from falling into slavery. Both endings are incredibly tragic.

What makes them interesting is that, in spite of the very different ways these two men lead, they both have the same flaw. They paid no attention to the people they led.

For Rocks, his crew was all about himself, his own dreams and his ability to force them to work towards his own ends. By the time it collapsed he had been betrayed by one of his crewmates and the rest had been too busy fighting amongst themselves to help him in his darkest hour. For all of Harald’s diplomatic overtures to distant lands, his own nation had deep rifts between factions that led to constant infighting. A little of that peacemaking at home would have been nice. He spent so much time overseas that he neglected his two sons, creating every circumstance they could want to thrive in the future – except for his own love and attention.

After all was said and done, what we are left with is a much clearer picture of why Luffy is the hero of our tale. Many legendary figures have sailed the Grand Line before. However, we do not just need a leader who looks forward to a goal. Finding the One Piece demands a leader who will look behind him, to care for the people who follow in his footsteps as well.

The threefold contrast between Luffy, Rocks and Harald makes this clear. It’s a fascinating use of character writing to drive home a core theme of the larger story. At the same time, it is a strong story in its own right. It also shows the importance of not analyzing these characters as their tropes. Both Rocks and Harald fall into archetypes we’ve already seen in One Piece. Many people thought of Rocks as a predecessor to Luffy himself because he was a pirate who strove to be free of the World Government.

However, that ignores the details of Rocks’ story in favor of his trope. Rocks doesn’t trust his crew, he exploits them. He doesn’t seek his own dream in conjunction with others. He destroys things that get in his way and devours the rest, though not with any malice per se. He’s not typologically related to Luffy or Gold Rogers (who is largely a previous iteration of Luffy’s archetype). The closest character to Rocks’ type in the story is probably Crocodile, who is an unambiguous villain.

If you’re struggling with how to compare and contrast characters who are very similar to each other in a single narrative, I suggest studying One Piece. As Rocks, Harald and Luffy show I believe it’s very worthwhile.

The Right Tool for the Job

Posted by natechen on April 4, 2026

I’ve noticed a growing tendency, when stories are analyzed on the World Wide Web, to talk about them from two angles: Genre and tropes.

Let me start by acknowledging the elephant in the room. I am one of the people who likes to think about genres and tropes, to the point where I once wrote a somewhat lengthy series of posts on this very blog which I titled Genrely Speaking. I enjoyed writing that series and several people have told me they enjoyed reading it. I haven’t added to it recently, largely because I’ve already written about all the genres I feel I know well enough to expound on. I still think having a reference for genre conventions helps more than harms discussions of fiction.

I haven’t delved as deeply into tropes in my own essays but I have read a great deal of that authoritative internet reference known as TV Tropes. I like tropes just as much as I like genres. They’re frequently more useful than not when discussing fiction and they make useful widgets to think about when working on stories or characters. In general, when used wisely, tropes are good storytelling tools.

However, when wisely used, tropes and genres are tools for discussion. Not analysis.

Tropes and genres are like colors. There are a lot of them, theoretically infinite numbers of them, but people have a general understanding of what is meant when they are invoked. No one pictures the same red in their mind’s eye when they hear the name of that color. Yet if I told you my car is red you wouldn’t expect my car to match the exact shade of red your mind’s eye defaults when you go looking for it. You realize that red is a spectrum in the truest sense of the word.

Tropes and genres have the same power. Everyone pictures a different movie in their mind’s eye when they hear of an adventure movie. At the same time, no one would really question you if you said you wanted to watch an adventure movie and you chose Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Or The Rescuers: Down Under. Or Jason and the Argonauts.

That is because these are all adventure stories, even though they come from different eras, are filmed in different mediums and feature wildly different protagonists with different goals. When we discuss them, we see the similarities that make them alike, even though they are wildly different. They take us to exotic locations. We go there with brave souls, seeking to fulfill grand and meaningful goals. We will see dangers there and our heroes will overcome them by virtue of their simple yet noble characters, with a decent side of hard work and daring do.

On the other hand, there are problems tropes become a tool for analysis rather than a term for discussion. Take, for example, Rian Johnson’s Knives Out. Knives Out, is a whodunnit murder mystery and one of the key witnesses in said mystery is Marta, a nurse who gets violently nauseous and vomits whenever she lies. These kinds of pronounced personality quirks are very common in a certain kind of mystery. They add spice and interest to the puzzle because they offer the audience testimony they know is true, something that can be leveraged to make the puzzle both easier and more difficult to accomplish.

However, at the climax of the mystery in Knives Out the culprit is cornered because Marta lies several times without apparent difficulty. This is “explained” by having her throw up after the scene is over. The problem is, this breaks the narrative by having the character do something we were repeatedly told she could not do without any clear explanation. There is nothing wrong with this twist inherently. Yet nothing is done earlier in the narrative to justify it so it feels more like a plothole with a postage stamp over it than a serious development of the narrative. This is typically justified as “subverting” the trope underpinning Marta’s character.

Johnson does something similar in Glass Onion, another whodunnit, when he introduces the character Helen Brand as the identical twin sister of the murder victim, Andi. He was praised for doing something innovative and new with the genre. Why? Because the murderer having an identical twin is a trope often associated with bad mysteries.

However, Andi and Helen being twins doesn’t have any impact on the plot, other than introducing plot holes. Andi is invited to a retreat for the tech startup she works for but she’s been murdered. So Helen accepts the invitation in her place, bringing the detective Benoit Blanc along with her in the hopes she can solve Andi’s murder. She isn’t discovered until she reveals herself and the murderer never reacts to her presence with a world famous detective in any way. In short, the twin murderers trope isn’t even subverted. It’s not in play. It’s not even really important to the plot. Andi could have simply survived the first murder attempt and the rest of the story could have played out as written, except with less exposition to explain how her twin sister pulled off impersonating her.

In spite of this, Johnson receives a lot of praise for this decision.

The problem is, subverting a trope is something that must be done with care, thought and careful setup in the narrative itself or it becomes arbitrary, dependent on the audience reading the story rather than the storytelling. These choices do not expand on the story’s theme, do not illuminate the characters, do not add intrigue. They just eat up screen time and appeal to the audience’s understanding of tropes and conventions to make… a joke? Do they even have a point? It’s hard to tell.

Overall it’s poor craftsmanship and worse communication. Yet Johnson has received a lot of praise for the way he plays with tropes because people are only looking at the tropes and not the way they fit together. It’s a bit like looking at a house built with cedar wood and praising it for its excellent construction, in spite of the cracked foundation and leaking roof. The building is more than its materials just as a story is more than its genre and tropes.

This problem can creep up in the reverse, as well. In the manga Freiren: Beyond Journey’s End, the character of Himmel is vitally important to understanding the world. He is a hero who spent a decade of his life fighting demons and eventually defeating the demon lord, ushering in a more peaceful era. One of his companions, Freiren, is an elf who ultimately outlives him. As the name implies, Freiren: Beyond Journey’s End focuses on what this elf does in the decades after their triumph over the demon lord. It’s a deep, introspective story about memory, identity and what it means to live for a really, really long time.

Himmel is a character who is vitally important to understanding Freiren’s emotional journey. Those that pay attention find him to be a rich, fascinating and nuanced man. However it’s common to see the general discourse online boil Himmel down to a flat, simple character who was “the hero.” He fought the demon lord because he was the hero. He won because he was the hero. He was a charitable man because he was the hero.

This ignores Himmel’s boundless ego, an ego that led to him personally posing for statues in dozens of cities across the north. It ignores how hard he pushed his companions to measure up to his standards. It overlooks his naivete in the face of demonic evil, which led him to spare his enemies early in his career and directly led to tragedy. Most of all it ignores the many questions Freiren’s relationship to Himmel raises about him.

Himmel was in love with Freiren. Yet in spite of the many opportunities he had to appeal to her he never offered her a relationship, even once their work was done. Why? Time was a chasm between them – Freiren is more than a millenia old – and Himmel was deeply aware of that. Was that enough to drown Himmel’s high opinion of himself?

There are hints part of his obsession with statues stems from that. Was Freiren the source of his craving for legendary status or did she just feed into something that already existed?

Was Freiren really unaware of Himmel’s feelings? If so, why did she find herself weeping at the graveside of a person she only knew for ten years?

These and other questions are a vein of deep, rich reflection on human nature encompassed in a charming, heartwarming story that plays out at an expert pace. Slapping a simple label on this central character and saying, “It’s because he’s the hero” is a grave disservice to the author, the characters and the audience. Yet when tropes become analytical tools, that’s exactly what happens.

I like tropes and genres. They’re very useful tools for summing up an idea when we start to explore it. Yet when they become the end goal of exploring an idea we’re locked into simple, shallow and ultimately flat considerations of those ideas. Stories suffer for it and so do we. To go back to an earlier analogy, it’s best to think of tropes as the materials we build our story from. They have strengths and weaknesses of themselves, sure. However, in an actual story they have to be shaped, fitted and attached to one another with purpose and skill or even the best trope will make for a poor story.

Focus on purpose and skill and we’ll see better stories overall, no matter what genres and tropes are used.

A Precious Cornerstone – Afterwords

Posted by natechen on March 21, 2026

The status quo is often invoked as a negative thing. People try to escape it, war against it or moralize about it but rarely do they embrace it. Yet, for the fiction writer, the status quo is an incredibly useful tool.

Building a story from the ground up is an incredibly demanding task, requiring the construction of coherent characters, worlds, conflicts and story arcs. Once the story is over you need to start that process all over again – unless you have a status quo. If there is a predictable place that your stories starts from and ends at then you can save yourself half or more of that work. Coherent characters and worlds continue to exist, you only need to add conflict and arc. Certain kinds of conflict can even bake themselves into the fabric of the status quo.

These reliable touchstones in a story aren’t just there for the benefit of the creators, either, audiences like them a great deal as well. It can be incredibly draining to spend so much time learning new characters and worlds every time you crack a book or sit down for a movie. Sometimes you want to slip into a story like an old pair of slippers. The familiar is a powerful draw for consumers who will often read the same story with a different coat of paint over and over again. In more optimistic terms, TV shows have perfected the craft of offering viewers the same character solving new hurdles every week.

That doesn’t necessarily the status quo is a good thing.

Like many things that creep up in artistic pursuits, the status quo is not strictly positive or negative. On the other hand, it is something you must be aware of.

When I set out to write Firespinner, Roy’s first adventure, I made it a point to set a status quo that I thought would facilitate the widest variety of potential stories. Roy was a travelling mercenary, moving about the Columbian West, doing whatever was needed. He would never be in the same place twice. He would ostensibly work alone but forever be pulling in favors, expertise and allies from various parties.

I always knew Roy had a “home base” he worked out of, that it was called Oakheart Manor and that I wanted to set a story there. In point of fact, A Precious Cornerstone was one of the first two story ideas I had after I started on Firespinner (the other being Night Train to Hardwick). Ironically, that alone broke from the status quo of one of Roy’s adventures. He’s not there to work, he’s there waiting for his next job and keeping in touch with his broad library of connections.

That’s a pretty passive role and makes it difficult to build conflict out of. The idea that he’d picked up an object someone else wanted and would try to steal quickly occurred to me and the events of Cornerstone eventually grew out of that. However, given the nature of storytelling, the balance of things made it difficult to make Roy the protagonist. He’s not pushing events forward. Largely he reacts to input from Cassie and Marius, which makes his point of view very important but not really that of the main character.

That’s Marius. He’s the one on a job, he’s the one who wants something and, I quickly realized, he’s the one who should get it. That was another break from the status quo. Roy doesn’t lose very often, which makes sense because he is the protagonist, he’s well equipped and very experienced. That means the person who bests him needs to be all those things, except moreso.

At the same time, just being equal or better than Roy on all counts doesn’t mean all that much given that our hero is usually behind the ball. He’s quite used to people who outclass him one way or another. He’s also used to winning. I needed another element to break Roy off from the confrontation. There had to be something beyond physical defeat to ensure that Roy doesn’t pursue the conflict perpetually because he’s a stubborn man. That was the origin of the three coin duel. That was also the origin of Cassie’s betrayal.

Either one of those things might not be enough to stop someone like Roy from pursuing Marius to the ends of the earth (or at least southern Tetzlan). However, I felt like both of them are enough to tell him he shouldn’t pursue the path. At the same, the Fairchilds have become a steady part of Roy’s status quo, allies that are nice to have for the characters and the audience. Putting a wedge between them is another change to the status quo…

Will the breach ever be mended? Time will tell. But you shouldn’t be surprised if Roy is forced to work in solitude again, at least the next time he turns up around here. Will that become the new status quo? That’s harder to say.

In the meantime, I hope you’ve enjoyed this story. I had a lot of fun writing it. Now my attention turns back to the wild realms of Nerona, where Cassian Ironhand and his friends are finding their way through a new city with new problems…

But before that, I’ll be taking a week off and indulging myself in a few more essays on the art of writing. I’ll see you April 4th!

A Precious Cornerstone Chapter Fourteen – A Sudden Parting

Posted by natechen on March 14, 2026

Previous Chapter

The morning sun shone down on the bluffs, a bright, harsh light that cast the hills in hard edges and deep shadows. A thin haze drifting up from the Manor house was the only smudge on the bright blue sky. Cassie took a deep breath and let it out slowly, revelling in the simple pleasure of seeing again. Her brief absence from the world of the looking had left her with a new found appreciation for a sense she had always taken for granted.

Going blind was a fact of her life. Up until the last few days she had assumed that the gifts she had would make up for that. Certainly, her sense of hearing was not normal. She could hear every word Roy was saying in spite of the fact that she was up on the bluff’s highest point and he was down in the Armory. That didn’t mean her sight meant nothing to her.

An uncomfortable analogy to the quest for the Secret of Steel popped into her mind but she pushed it aside. Having the opportunity to enjoy her sight again didn’t mean she could ignore her ears. She turned around and headed down towards the back of the house, where Mrs. Sondervan was busy scrubbing blood out of Roy’s shirt.

“There’s a guest coming up from town,” Cassie said. “He sounds like he’s about twenty minutes away. If I have the timing right he probably got off the morning skytrain, which means he’s likely the gentleman you contacted for Mr. Harper.”

The housekeeper nodded, pulling the shirt off the washboard and pinning it to the drying line with fast, practiced movements. “That’s likely. Mr. Booker was always good at getting where he wanted to go quickly. I’ll let Mr. Harper know.”

“No, I’ll tell him.” The words came out faster than she’d intended, faster than she was comfortable with. “I just wanted you to know when to expect him.”

Mrs. Sondervan gave her a sideways look, the meaning of which she wasn’t entirely certain of, but nodded. “Thank you, Miss Fairchild. That’s very kind of you.”

The inside of the Manor was a depressing wreck. Even the parts of the house that hadn’t burned were full of lingering smoke, which had contributed to her spending the morning outdoors. The men were in the process of pulling up broken and burnt boards out of the walls and floors of the house and replacing them, a process that involved crowbars, hammers and the occasional curse.

Roy and Mr. Sondervan were working to patch a hole in the hallway floor. A few feet closer to the front of the house her brother was ripping the burnt ends of boards off the wall studs. His hand had returned to normal but there were still odd notes in his voice when he spoke which might be a cause for concern. She hadn’t gotten him to hold still long enough to investigate it yet.

That wasn’t about to change, either. When Brandon saw her coming he glanced down the hall and said, “Georg, give me a hand with this rubbish, will you?”

The rubbish in question was a barrel, sawed in half, that the men had been throwing broken and burnt boards into. They weren’t even full and Brandon was more than capable of moving both of them on his own when they were. Clearly her brother was deliberately clearing the building for reasons of his own. She ignored the two of them as they gathered their things and left her alone in the hall with Roy.

The Manor’s owner was standing on a ladder down in the Armory, his head and shoulders protruding through the hole as he worked on the joists. As she approached he pulled a pair of nails out of his teeth and set them on one of the wooden beams along with his hammer. “Morning, Miss Fairchild.”

Cassie glanced at the bandage on his forearm. “Should you really be doing that?”

“I can’t leave my house a wreck, can I?” The flames that crackled within him had choked down low as she approached but now they growled with a strange overtone she didn’t really understand. There was a frightening edge to it that she’d never heard before.

“It sounds like Mr. Booker is on his way up from town.”

“Moving fast as always,” he grumbled, bracing his good hand on the edge of the hole and dragging himself up into a sitting position on the floor on the far side of the hole. He pulled his feet up and levered himself into a standing position then stared at her. “Was there anything else?”

“Are you sure you’re feeling well, Mr. Harper? You don’t seem yourself.”

“I don’t know if I count as healthy right now but I’ve been in much worse condition.” Roy rubbed the palms of his hands together, a gesture she’d never seen from him before. “Your vision seems to have returned.”

“Yes.”

The silence between them stretched into something awkward before Roy finally said, “Why did you want Marius to leave with the cornerstone?”

She jumped as if Roy had burned her, the shock racing through her body before her better sense caught up with it. “What do you mean?”

The question was a flimsy attempt to cover for her guilty reaction and Roy clearly knew it. “Don’t act stupid, Cassandra. I’ve dueled with that coin before and I’ve heard it hit the ground, or rather I should say I didn’t hear it hit the ground. There’s only one reason I would this time. It shouldn’t take that much for you to alter the course of a coin flip from what I’ve seen and I heard the note you used to do it. I just want to know why.”

In the light of day it was a much harder question to answer than it had been just twelve hours ago. How much of her vision the night before had come from the lingering dread she carried out of Riker’s Cove? How much was her own insecurities born from losing her sight for the first time? How much had been carefully planted by Marius, who knew far more about stone singers than the average person? It was impossible to tell. The best thing to do was try to make him understand what her thoughts had been in the moment.

“I heard Huaxili last night, Mr. Harper. As I was crossing the bluffs.” Nervous and at an inexplicable loss for words, she paused to wet her lips. “She… we came to understand each other, I think.”

“You let Marius take her because she wanted to go?” He sounded horrified.

“No! No, she wanted to stay, Mr. Harper. She has some purpose in mind for you, whether it’s revenge or simply malice I couldn’t tell but she had her sights set on you.” Cassie shuddered slightly at the memory of her brief contact with the Tetzlani spirit. “And she was in your blind spot because you thought she was contained but she wasn’t. I’ve been able to sense her influence since we returned from Riker’s Cover. It’s probably always been there but I wasn’t able to hear it until my ears were forced to make up for the lack of my eyes.”

Roy’s shock turned to concern. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because I didn’t understand what it was, had no idea there was a Tetzlani earth goddess at all, much less that she was hiding in your Armory. You never asked us to go down there before. Which, given what was down there, was a fairly prudent decision on the whole.”

Roy sighed and ran a hand through his hair, his expression pensive. “Fine. I suppose those are good enough reasons as any for it and there wasn’t exactly an opportunity to discuss the issue ahead of time.”

“I would have if I could.”

“I don’t doubt it, Miss Fairchild, but that doesn’t make things any less difficult.” His gaze flicked past her towards the front door. “I’m going to have to explain all this mess to Books. He didn’t want to leave the coalstoking thing with me in the first place.”

She wondered why Roy would have to explain anything to his friend in the first place. At first glance he didn’t seem like much of a leader, lacking the kind of personable air that usually marked such people. Yet she’d noticed most people quickly gave way to his brusque energy and clarity of purpose. “Perhaps I can explain things to him-”

“No.” He said it with sharp certainty. “You definitely should not do that. In fact, I’d like it if you and Brandon gathered your things and slipped down the back side of the bluff to spend a few days in town.”

For a moment Cassie was too shocked to say anything. Then she rallied and asked, “Why?”

Roy pulled his attention back to her, his expression blank again. “Frankly speaking, because I’d rather he not know what you look like. Out here in the West we have one kind of dangerous men and let’s not kid ourselves, I’m one of the most dangerous among them. But there’s an entirely different breed of them that work in the shadows of the powerful and Reginald Booker is the pinnacle of their kind. Not even I know how he’s going to take this.”

“You don’t think he’ll defer to your judgement on this?”

“Deferring judgement is not a concept he understands, Miss Fairchild, and I’d rather not take chances.”

“I understand.” She really didn’t. It was hard to piece together what exactly he was implying but whatever had him in this unusual mood it was something that intimidated him more than the greatest duelist in Tetzlan. So she swallowed down all the objections she wanted to make and said, “We’ll be on our way in a few minutes, then. If my letter contains a useful lead on the Secret of Steel perhaps we’ll just follow it up. Leave town for a few days.

“That might be best.”

“Very well.” She turned to go and collect Brandon.

To her surprise, Roy walked her to the front door. As he held it open for her he said, “Cassie. You and your brother are still welcome back here once this business is done.”

“Thank you, Mr. Harper.” She swallowed once, her voice suddenly thick. In truth, she wasn’t entirely sure they were. Even if Roy said it, even if she still felt she’d made the right choice, she still sensed a hurt in his voice, a sense of betrayal that was entirely justified. She’d damaged something last night. Done far more hurt to it with a single note than she’d done to her own eyes with an hour of singing in Riker’s Cove.

Maybe she shouldn’t come back.

But that was a decision she’d have to make later. For now, she’d have to keep moving. “Hearthfires, Roy.”

“Hearthfires, Cassie. Keep your brother out of trouble.”

“Of course.”

As she went to find Brandon she found herself wondering if she was satisfied with that. They might be the last words they ever exchanged and that thought filled her with a profound sadness. It was an odd thing to think. Not one brought by the melody of the situation, not one inspired by a sense of supernatural dread. It felt more like one that arose from within her own heart and that almost made it worse.

So she pushed it down and went on her way.

A Precious Cornerstone Chapter Thirteen – The Third Exchange

Posted by natechen on March 7, 2026

Previous Chapter

Roy offered the dueling mark to Marius. “Do you want to toss it or should I?”

“Down south we have the challenged person toss the coin,” Marius replied, lowering the point of his sword as he shook his arms out. “The challenger is also heads, though if the Columbian traditions are different I’m happy to do things your way. I suppose if I win I get to take the cornerstone back to Tetzlan with me but I’m curious what you expect to get if you win.”

“You go home and leave me in peace.” He gestured back towards the smoking ruin of the house’s east wall with his off hand. “And pay for the lumber to fix my house.”

“You burned that on your own, senor.” Marius smiled, though, and patted at the pocket where he kept his coin purse. “Yet I think arrangements can be made. I would like to add one thing to my prize, if you don’t mind.”

Roy’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

“The iron plate you kept the cornerstone on.” Marius shifted the box clamped under his left arm until it made its way down to his off hand, then rotated it so Roy could see the strange marks on it. Then he set it on the ground off to one side. “That mirror frame in your basement damaged the wards on the box I brought to contain it and I’ll need something to reinforce them.”

Odd that Marius would want an iron plate to repair wards damaged by steel. Roy had always been under the impression that the two metals were very similar in function but perhaps there was some hint at a difference there. He filed the thought away for later, as it wasn’t the thing to focus on now. “Fine. You can have the plate if you tell me what you did with Miss Fairchild if I win.”

“I swear to do so regardless.” Marius leaned back, stretching out his torso and chest, then snapped back upright and raised his blade to a guard. “If there is nothing else, let us begin. I have a schedule to keep.”

“Will you use magic?” Roy asked.

“No.”

The man’s answer was flat and immediate, giving no hint as to whether he still could use magic. Roy kept his annoyance away from his face. He’d been hoping to bring his own talent for manipulating flames to the third bout but, after he’d already played his strongest cards, he was pretty much out of options himself.

He’d already revealed the secret to the Manor walls and exhausted all the heat he brought with him from them. Marius probably wouldn’t wait for him to go back for more. And conjuring ice from the necklace too frequently was a risky move, as well. It got hungry. In fact, at this point Roy probably had just as little magic at his disposal as the duelist did. Maybe less.

So it would have to be a straight fight.

Roy assumed his own stance, weight even, messer between himself and Marius. The other man had a reach advantage and, by all accounts, a much longer history as a duelist. It was going to be a difficult bout. Other than a brief encounter with a Tetzlani gold drinker a few months ago he hadn’t traded blows with an Iberian swordsman in years and he tried to remember their habits. Conventional wisdom was that they were quite technical, but a little effete. Close quarters might be the way to go.

He brought the dueling mark in his offhand up and displayed it for Marius to see then balanced it on his finger tips. A deft curl of his hand and it wound up in the crook of one finger, perched on this thumb. “The Lord in Raging Skies judges the rightness of all disputes,” Roy said, drawing on half remembered phrases from the circuit judges he’d met. “May he judge between you and I.”

“The earth is the foundation of life,” Marius replied. “If your path is level it will favor you. If not, may you sink beneath.”

That seemed like all there was to say so Roy threw the coin. It flew into the air with a sharp metallic ringing noise, glimmers of starlight reflecting on its surface.

Marius was moving before Roy’s thumb was fully extended. However instead of rushing in headfirst, exploiting the incredibly sharp movements Roy had come to expect from the other to close the distance, Marius reached high. With a blinding sweep of his blade he slapped the tip of Roy’s sword, then looped back to try and prick Roy’s hand as his wrist was wrenched out of line. It was a shockingly fast move and Roy only kept his hand unbloodied because he jerked his own guard up reflexively.

It saved his hand but left him with his own blade too high to block and Marius pressed forward, forcing his point up to try and prick Roy’s sword arm a second time. Roy was already moving forward as well, which saved him as the point wound up under his arm before it could find its new line of attack. For the moment he was spared due to the dullness of the rapier’s edge, which slid along his sleeve without biting in.

His own attempt to slash Marius’ sword arm was stopped when the duelist shoved his left forearm up under Roy’s right wrist. Just like that, the two of them came to grips. Roy made a grab for Marius’ off hand, thinking he could throw the other, but instead he offered his left arm to the darting point of the rapier.

It had been a long time since he’d been run through. It was only an arm this time but it hurt just as badly as he remembered. The worst part was the fact that Roy was running out of time before the coin hit ground, rendering a verdict, and so far Marius was clearly the better duelist at the moment. Teeth gritted, Roy pressed even further forward.

For a brief moment he saw a shocked expression on Marius’ face before his headbutt connected, only slightly deflected by the brims of their hats. Headgear and combatants scattered in all directions. Roy kept his feet in spite of the searing pain of the rapier point pulling out of his arm and his sword windmilled about, aimed at the space Marius’ neck would normally occupy. Unfortunately the Tetzlani duelist wasn’t as hard headed as Roy was and he had ducked away from the impact. The edge of the messer scraped along the top of his skull, scattering a mix of hair and blood, but did little lasting harm. Roaring in pain, Marius snapped up in his guard once more and Roy matched him.

Blood was already running down the side of the other man’s face and Roy could feel his own trickling down his left arm. As his weight shifted forward for the next exchange a single note chimed across the bluff. It rang with supernatural clarity and brought both men to a halt, breathing hard.

They stared at each other for a moment, the unspoken question of who would go and look at the coin hanging between them.

“Heads.”

Cassie’s voice cut between them like a physical thing.

“It’s over here, if you want to look at it yourself.”

With a deliberate effort Roy broke away from Marius’ death glare and glanced around to find Cassie standing a few dozen feet away, the dueling mark softly gleaming on the ground beside her. He walked over and looked at it.

“Dust and ashes.”

Marius sheathed his rapier but remained where he was. “Then I’ll take my prize.”

Roy also stowed his weapon and pressed his hand over his wound, trying to staunch both sides of the wound by pressing the other side into his shirt. “I’m sorry to impose on you right away, Miss Fairchild, but could you ask your brother to bring the iron plate for the cornerstone up from the Armory?”

From the look she gave him he could tell she wasn’t happy to be sent away immediately but she headed into the house without protest. He did notice she went though the front door, rather than use the more convenient entrance he’d just added. Roy himself had no such computations. “Come on,” he said, tilting his head towards the Manor. “Let’s get a bandage on your head before you go.”

“Very generous of you,” Marius said, cautiously following along behind. “You could have hoped I would bleed out on the way home and spare your reputation that way.”

“I’d rather not risk you dying and leaving that rock in the middle of the desert.” Roy walked through the scorched remains of his house towards the kitchen where he kept a small surgical kit. “My reputation, such as it is, isn’t worth that.”

Roy pulled the kit down from a cupboard and set it on the table. He took a roll of bandages and bottle of alcohol for himself while Marius took the scissors and quickly snipped his hair back from the edge of his wound. “You know, nothing about this job went the way I expected.”

“Burning my own house wasn’t something I ever wanted to do, either.” Roy hissed as the alcohol stung his wound. “Do you mind if I ask you something?”

“He’s dead.”

Roy turned to the other man in surprise. “Who?”

“Whatever man you knew who died touching the cornerstone. There’s no way to revive them once they’re like that. We tried it for decades and all we managed to do was turn a stone corpse into a flesh one. They’re probably not actually alive in there.” Marius dabbed alcohol on his scalp with a bandage then grimaced. “The cults say a lot of things about their gods that probably aren’t true.”

“So he hasn’t been aware and suffering as a living block of stone for the last six years?”

Marius lowered his hands and looked Roy straight in the eye. “I don’t truly know.” The uncertainty in his eyes matched his words. “And there’s no way to ask anyone who would. If it makes you feel any better, once we’re done with the stone and it’s destroyed we believe anyone who’s touched it will return to flesh. They’ll be dead, but at least you’ll know for sure.”

“How long will that take?”

“I don’t know. A year. Maybe three.”

The kitchen door swung open and Brandon walked in, carrying the warding box in one hand. He had reverted to his normal form except for the hand that cradled the plate, which seemed like it was covered in more layers of wood than normal for his free form. Roy frowned. He’d never seen Brandon touch iron directly before. Most people didn’t. Wordlessly, the knight put the box down on the table and gave Roy a curious look.

Ray ignored it and gestured to Marius. “Take it and get out of here before I change my mind.”

The Tetzlani man nodded and rearranged things so the box’s damaged side was sitting on the plate, then he picked it all up and said, “Thank you, Mr. Harper. I’m sorry for all that this has cost you. Ultimately, that happened because my people couldn’t protect the cornerstone properly. We won’t let that happen again.”

Then he took the box and was gone.

Roy found himself staring blankly at the table top for several moments. Then Brandon asked, “What now? Are we going to run him down later and steal it back?”

“No. I’m not sure it’s worth it at this point. Let’s call it a night. Tomorrow we have to find Georg and start fixing my house.”

A Precious Cornerstone Chapter Twelve – A Jealous Goddess

Posted by natechen on February 28, 2026

Previous Chapter

Oddly enough Cassie found it easier to see the bluffs in the growing darkness than she had during the day. As the sun slipped behind the hills she found it easier to make out the low scrub brush and the subtle differences between the color of grass and open dirt. It was probably wiser to wait at the campsite for someone to find her. Yet the discordant echoes rising from below the dirt made her more and more anxious.

So she set out to follow Marius’ path through the earth via sound, carefully picking her way over the bluffs while occasionally pausing to press an ear to the ground. Thankfully, the Tetzlani man had conjured a particularly large elemental and it was easy to hear. Far easier than crossing the bluffs herself.

As she picked her way down the hill Marius had chosen for his campsite Cassie found her mind wandering. The mercenary had told her the ground below Oakheart Manor resisted his calls. This reluctance to answer him he assigned to her, which was a very curious conclusion to reach in her opinion. She didn’t know the bluffs very well. She hadn’t stayed in the vicinity long and, in the time she’d spent there, she hadn’t invested any of it in walking the hills or singing to the stones in the way she might have in Avalon.

Yet there was no reason to doubt Marius’ assessment, either. The man was clearly a very skilled lithomancer, perhaps the best she had met in person, and that was a much more formal school of magic than stonesong. He undoubtedly did a lot of book study in the process of mastering his craft. He didn’t have a reason to lie to her about it, either. Perhaps it had something to do with the bluffs themselves or some quirk of their history. She would have to ask Roy about it at some point, when there were less pressing issues to deal with.

However the issues of the moment left little time for her musings. As she made her way across the valley between one hill and the next an incredible racket rose up from nearby. That made it very apparent which bluff Oakheart Manor stood on, although with her vision clearing more by the minute she could probably have made her way there without the sound to guide her in another half an hour or so.

Whether going to the Manor at that moment was a good idea or not was an open question.

In point of fact, it wasn’t. As Cassie’s foot fell on the worn dirt path leading up to the Manor house she heard the distant whine from Marius’ blood funnel once more. This time it rang clarion through the open air, filled with a deep, heartbreaking hatred. Layered through the long, keening note was a story of loss, of broken bonds, of a fellowship once strong and nourishing now reduced to dust and ashes.

With the sound came a wash of hot, dry air. It smelled of warm stone, beat on her skin like sunlight and sucked the moisture out of her mouth and nose all at once. A lifetime of experience warned her this wasn’t real. It was a revelation, an echo in the earth so powerful it moved beyond sound and became a full sensory apparition. Stone song at its most powerful and sinister.

Not even her weakened vision was immune to the influence of the wail, the view shifting from dim shadows on a dirt path to the sharp stone edges of an early morning mountainside. Cassie’s head spun with vertigo as the rocks rushed past her. It had been a long time since the song had brought her an apparition like this and her body hadn’t been prepared for it.

Somewhere else, Cassie sat down hard on the ground. In the vision, she ran over the rocks, looking around frantically as she scrambled down the mountainside.

Brennan!

It was Roy’s voice, high and desperate, coming from her. Cassie had never seen a vision from a living person before and briefly wondered why this would be her first. Seeing through his eyes it was impossible to tell if this was a glimpse of the past or the future.

Their shared vision latched onto a patch of pale blue cotton that stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the brown stones and brown dirt of the mountain. They turned and ran towards it at full tilt, skidding around brush and leaping over rocks with reckless abandon. At first Cassie thought it was just a jacket. Then she realized her mistake.

It was a jacket wrapped around a strangely misshapen pile of rock.

Brennan!

They dropped to the ground and grabbed the jacket and one edge of the stone within it then heaved it up and over. The ugly thing resisted their efforts for a moment then finally rolled over as they let out an anguished groan. As she’d feared, it wasn’t just a rock. It was a man whose body had hardened to stone, his eyes blank and unseeing. The individual hairs of his neatly trimmed beard were clearly visible for a moment before the movement broke the delicate rock threads apart. The most surreal part was his mouth, half open as if to say something, with the teeth and tongue clearly visible inside.

Dust and ashes. They reared up to their feet, gaze fixed on a familiar, pitted hunk of stone cradled in the statue’s hands. Coalstoking cult!

In that moment, as Roy stood up, rocked back on one leg and stomped Huaxili’s cornerstone out of Brennan’s hands, Cassie felt herself separate from the vision. As the apparition faded one last whisper drifted down the side of the bluff to her. But it wasn’t Roy’s voice this time. It was deep, husky and feminine, full of contempt and desire, and it said one word. Mine.

The mountainside faded into the shadowed bluff once more, leaving Cassie shivering and confused. The rumbling, crackling cacophony on the top of the bluff was still going but she ignored it. Dread gripped her again but she was starting to understand it. There was a difference between this and the mindless panic she’d experienced at the top of the lighthouse but they both felt unnatural.

One was the work of a deranged man’s conjurings, the other the influence of Huaxili. The fact Roy hadn’t mentioned the Tetzlani god was, in fact, a goddess annoyed Cassie, as it probably had something to do with why she was the only one Huaxili had influenced. When she was young she’d spent a year with the Heath Keepers. Her father believed developing a closer connection with the Lady in Burning Stone would give her songs greater force. However it was possible it had also made her more open to other earthly elementals like Huaxili.

The other possibility was that Huaxili herself disliked Cassie. Though their connection had been brief and veiled in a vision of Roy’s past, Cassie could sense the deep bitterness and jealousy of the entity. She suspected it had little of it was directed at her but rather originated from the nature of the goddess. Where the Lady was a warm, nurturing creature who balanced her husband’s cold, distant nature; Huaxili was grasping and possessive and, if she had ever had a relationship to balance her flaws, it was now long gone.

Clearly, when Roy had claimed the cornerstone the goddess had marked him in some way. If Marius was right about how the artifact’s malicious magic lived in some blindspot inherent to firespinners that made matters worse, since he had no idea Huaxili had staked a claim on him. For a split second Cassie saw another vision.

Roy Harper, turned to stone, wedged into the base of a sprawling temple complex built on the backs of countless people transformed to statues, aware of their fate for millennia as they slowly wore away to dust. She wasn’t sure if this apparition came from Huaxili or her own talents but she knew it was unacceptable. As it passed Cassie scrambled to her feet, trying to clamp down on the unnatural panic.

She managed to stagger a few steps up the trail but quickly found herself gasping for breath, heart racing, physically unable to continue. Frustrated, she stopped and forced herself to breathe slowly and deliberately. She had performed in front of hundreds of people, sung to ghosts on behalf of death and seen the faces of creatures from beyond the horizon. She should be able to master this.

She felt a spark of annoyance at the waves of unnatural emotion and seized on it with a flash of inspiration. That was how Roy did it, after all. Whenever he wandered into a situation where normal people might get discouraged or afraid he would stoke up a disgruntled fury in himself to replace that feeling. She’d seen him do it time and again.

Of course, Cassie wasn’t nearly as irritable as he was but when she contemplated Huaxili’s constant meddling she got more and more angry. Inhaling deeply she slapped the side of the bluff with the flat of her hand. “This is my stage, Huaxili. Get off. Your whining is a terrible tune to begin with.”

A shrieking crash came from overhead as the sky lit up with a boom then everything went quiet. Cassie wasn’t sure what had happened but she took it as an opportunity and started towards the top of the bluff. Another wave of panic washed over her but she muttered, “What do you want with Roy, anyway? Annoyed that he’s ignoring you? He’s quite good at that you know, gets caught up in his work and can’t think about anything else. You’re more used to ignoring people than being ignored, aren’t you?”

A final wave of panic, the weakest yet, broke over her but now she could ignore it, her march up the path picking up speed as she gathered her skirts in one hand. “He’s not yours, Huaxili,” she muttered, “and it’s high time you left him alone.”

A Precious Cornerstone Chapter Eleven – The Burning of Oakheart Manor

Posted by natechen on February 21, 2026

Previous Chapter

The first thing Harper did was throw the dagger at him, which took Marius by complete surprise. It was a good throw, the dagger seemed quite well balanced for an implement made of cold wrought iron, and it was aimed squarely at Marius’ torso. Supposedly there were duelists in the world who could deflect arrows and daggers with their blades. If those stories were true, Marius envied them. He’d never had the courage to practice such reckless stunts, much less employ them in the real world.

He wasn’t sure how sharp the dagger’s tip was, iron being notoriously hard to sharpen, but it was iron and that was bad enough. So Marius was forced to throw himself to one side of the hallway to avoid the projectile. However, that proved to be exactly what Harper had wanted to happen because the pinewood wall he landed against immediately erupted with flames, driving him away. Marius beat at his jacket, brushing the embers off it, marveling at how willing Harper was to burn his own house just to win the fight.

In fact the firespinner seemed determined to end things with nothing beyond his own magic. Although he continued to hold his messer on guard, Harper did not close the distance. Instead the point of his sword wove back and forth, sending the curtain of fire jumping about the hallway and setting the walls and floor around Marius aflame. From the look in Harper’s eyes, Marius knew the circle of fire was meant as his grave.

There was no point trying to husband his strength for a successful escape at this point, Oakheart Manor had transformed into a deathtrap and just escaping would take some doing. Marius felt himself grinning, finally warming up to the work at hand. It was so rare to find someone who really knew what they were doing.

The wall was on fire and it had started burning far faster than was natural, so Marius began with the assumption that it had weakened far faster than normal as well. Gritting his teeth, he lifted one leg and kicked against the wall as hard as he could. As he’d hoped, the wall caved in easily, scattering sparks and embers everywhere, and his foot passed through to slam into a solid wooden wall on the other side of the frame.

A moment later the ring of fire Harper had built around him constricted, smothering him in unbelievable heat. With no time to ponder why the whole wall wasn’t burning, Marius slammed shoulder first into the battered section of wall, arms over his face, crashing through the burning barrier on one side and solid boards on the other. Along the way his body caught painfully on a remarkably sturdy object.

When he tumbled through the wall and into the dining room he had to pause long enough to rip off his burning jacket. In the process he caught a glimpse of the wall and finally understood what Harper had done.

On his first visit to Oakheart Manor Marius had figured the dark yellow pinewood that lined the room where Harper met him was some kind of veiled threat. A coffin for the unwary. His subconscious had noticed it everywhere else as he saw more of the house. But it was only now, as he watched the soft wooden boards lining the walls burn without damaging the pale hardwood frames that supported the house, that Marius truly appreciated why the Manor was named the way it was.

Roy Harper had not just built a house to enjoy when his life of professional violence was over. He had built a manse, designed from the very beginning to cater to his personal abilities in a way that even savvy invaders wouldn’t understand until it was too late. The one great weakness of abilities that manipulated fire was that they needed an open flame to manipulate. Someone who planned to use such powers a lot required an equal amount of stored magic or a great deal of fuel, both things that were difficult to find at the drop of a hat and easy to spot from a distance when stockpiled.

Yet Harper had hidden his fuel in plain sight by lining his walls with it. It must require incredible control to burn the soft planks on the walls but leave the hardwood untouched but that was the only explanation for it Marius could think of. It was an impressive feat.

And that feat was still ongoing. There was a large, plate glass window in the dining room and Marius made directly for it. Now that he understood the secret of Oakheart Manor he could spare even less time for care in his escape. He scooped up a chair one handed and put it through the window then leapt out onto the side of the bluff.

Ten steps later, as Marius fished his spell tiles out of his pocket once more, the wall of the house turned a deep, molten red then fell apart into ashes and embers. Harper strode out between the oak beams, a veritable tidal wave of flames following behind him. In spite of the incredible wave of heat that washed out of the house as he did so, not a single tongue of fire brushed against one of the hardwood pillars. The fire split into streams and flowed around them rather than anger its master.

The power was impressive, but nothing compared to what slept in the earth. The discipline needed to command it so perfectly was another matter entirely and Marius quietly moved the firespinner a notch higher in his ranking of skilled magicians he’d encountered.

As a wave of heat washed over Marius the solid plates of his bedrock elemental rose out of the ground once more, folding around him in a defensive posture. Unfortunately, Harper’s weapon of choice was fire and that was a far swifter offense than his stone could defend against. Running on foot was out of the question. With his elemental wounded by Harper’s wards he doubted it could sink him into the earth before the flames killed him, either.

That left a preemptive strike as Marius’ only option.

So he charged forward, pushing the elemental’s plates in front of him. Three plates formed a wall about twelve feet long and eight feet high and the fourth reinforced the center, rumbling forward like an avalanche that had learned to slide uphill. Three flaming orbs, each the size of a large dog, flew around the wall. One came around from each side of the elemental and the third looped over the top, neatly boxing him in, but Marius didn’t let that slow him.

Harper’s power and control made a side strike a natural solution but the line of the attack was too long. Marius was confident his thrust would connect first.

Or he was until a sudden whirlwind whipped across the bluff and his elemental slammed into a wall of howling ice. Cold whipped around his legs while a huge backdraft swept up from behind him, broiling the back of his neck. Surrounded by danger, Marius stuck to his guns, gambling that it was more dangerous to stay put or turn back than it was to go forward.

Besides, he had the wind at his back.

So the duelist leaped upward, grabbing the edge of a stone plate and using it to lever himself upwards, feet kicking against the elemental’s side as he scrambled over it. As he vaulted over top a wave of bitter cold sucked the air from his lungs. It felt like some titanic creature had opened its mouth and inhaled all the warmth from the hillside leaving Marius in the grip of a winter whirlwind pulling him towards the ground. A lesser man might have gotten caught in it and slammed into the earth before he was ready.

But Marius wasn’t any ordinary mercenary. He braced one hand against the top of the stone just long enough to slow his fall and get his legs under him. His left arm came away from the surface completely numb but he landed on his feet, rapier at the ready.

Behind him three explosions backlit the elemental’s bulk like temporary suns. A blast of heat followed and the bulk of Marius’ elemental cracked with a teeth rattling noise, reducing the creature’s animated form to so much loose rock. The tiles in Marius’ hand bucked and twitched as the elemental spirit withdrew. He wouldn’t be able to call on it again without another hour or two of work which made it effectively useless now.

Shattering the bedrock wasn’t the only result of the explosions. They also melted the ice into a cold, clinging mist that surrounded him in cold and damp. For a brief moment Marius thought he heard his father’s voice calling his name, even though Tiberio Menendez had been dead for years. Bewildered, Marius relaxed his vigilance for just a moment, a sudden confusion deadening his senses.

Then the ongoing rush of air from the explosion whipped the mists away and replaced them with Roy Harper, who was aiming a cut at Marius’ left arm. It was already numb from its brush with the ice and when he tried to yank it out of the way the movement was too slow. The firespinner’s blade landed unevenly, opening only a small cut there, but the impact was enough to jar his lithomancy tiles out of his hand. They went clattering into the wreckage of the elemental where it was impossible to pick them out in the dark.

Marius scrambled back, his guard raised once more, and worked the point of his rapier as he he glared at his opponent. In spite of his annoyance he found himself grinning. “Touche, Harper. Touche. The stories don’t do you justice.”

The other man snorted, annoyance clear on his face. “I never thought I would burn out half the house and someone would laugh about it afterward.”

“If you find that a surprise let me show you another!” Marius started to work his leading foot towards his opponent but Harper withdrew two paces and let the point of his own blade drop a few inches, digging in a pocket with his off hand. Curious, the duelist stopped his own advance to see what he was doing. It didn’t seem hostile.

Then the firespinner held up a single silver coin and he understood. “I’d give one to you and one to me so far,” Harper said. “What say we settle the last round properly?”

A Precious Cornerstone Chapter Ten – A Rooted Branch

Posted by natechen on February 14, 2026

Previous Chapter

The hardest thing to deal with when wielding a dueling rapier was a heavy polearm and Marius wasn’t surprised that Harper knew that. His attacks with his halberd were sharp, pointed and professional, though hardly those of a maestro. However what made the mercenary’s attack most difficult to deal with was not his weapon’s superior weight or reach but rather the large mass of fire that wove around him like a shield, always on his most vulnerable side, presenting a baking heat that Marius couldn’t strike through. He needed to be able to walk back to his horse, after all.

Without the searing barrier Marius was confident he could have grabbed onto the haft of Harper’s weapon and brought the situation to grips. His opponent was savvy enough not to give him the chance. The elemental was an option but it was busy with Cassandra’s brother and Marius’ hands were both busy at the moment so he couldn’t grab the tiles he needed to give it new orders.

Setting the box holding the cornerstone down was out of the question. So was putting his rapier aside. There were enough weapons in the basement to outfit a small mercenary company but with the way things had shaken out he couldn’t actually reach any of them without getting around his own elemental or his dueling opponent. With no opportunity presenting itself, Marius set out to make one of his own.

There was a lot of strange stuff sitting on the shelves along the wall. As Marius fell back before Harper’s onslaught he found small hiccups in the timing of his opponent’s strikes and used them to complicate his life. When the halberd’s tip went a slight bit high the rapier slashed left and knocked a small jar onto the floor. It smashed open and strange green glitter spilled out in a low hanging cloud.

Harper’s attention darted to the cloud for just a second then his huge ball of flame swept down and swallowed up the glittering fog in a shower of sparks. It wasn’t a huge opening but Marius couldn’t be sure he’d get anything better. Before he could waste the moment overthinking it he darted forward, pushing hard against the halberd’s haft with the flat of his blade to open up a path towards his target. He’d been reluctant to kill Harper up til that point but he could only indulge that feeling for so long.

Marius broke from the bind and let his momentum carry him lower, allowing him to strike under Harper’s guard. The point of his weapon shot forward towards Harper’s gut. At the last moment the other man twisted out of the way. The tip of Marius’ rapier scraped Harper’s flank and poked a hole in his suit jacket but did little to incapacitate him.

As Marius tried to recover from his strike Harper took one hand off his halberd, folded his elbow into a point and smashed it into his nose. Overextended as he was, Marius lost his balance and tumbled to the ground. A scramble ensued. Harper stomped a boot down on the blade of Marius’ rapier before swinging in with his halberd, aiming at the box in the duelist’s left hand.

Worried that the weapon might damage the wards carved into the sides of the box, Marius dropped it as gently as he could. The box bounced once and came to a rest by a large silvery mirror by the wall. Harper ignored it once it was out if Marius’ hand, choosing to press his offensive instead.

From the vicious series of jabs and chops the firespinner threw down at him, Marius guessed he wasn’t worrying about lethal strikes anymore either. Leaving his rapier under the boot, he kipped into a handspring that got the duelist back to his feet. The acrobatic stunt took Harper by surprise, letting Marius get ahold of the halberd’s haft and use it as a lever to throw Harper sideways into the grinding stone of the bedrock elemental. Rather than try to retrieve his weapon or the cornerstone, Marius pulled his tiles out of his pocket. With a few sharp movements he redirected the elemental’s focus from blocking anyone trying to cross the room to squashing Harper to paste.

The creature’s behavior changed immediately. Given how badly the cold had hurt it when they broke through Harper’s frozen ward, serving as an impediment against intruders was the task the elemental was least suited for. Its triangular shape and the rectangular dimensions of the room made it a poor obstacle. Once freed from that task it became much faster, twisting its plates around towards Harper and repeatedly slamming them to the floor. Harper scrambled between them, narrowly escaping one crashing attack and foiling another by bracing the elemental’s plate from underneath with his polearm.

A third plate shook from a large impact and one corner of it broke off. Cassandra’s brother had grabbed a large bearded axe from a rack and swung it about him with incredible fury. The irony of a living tree swinging an axe brought the touch of a smile to Marius’ lips but it wasn’t something he could ignore. Another shift of the tiles and the elemental’s fourth and final surviving plate swung sideways, sending axe and wielder sliding across the floor after a massive impact with the bedrock.

Marius took his attention off the battle long enough to scoop up his rapier and the cornerstone, cradling both in his left hand while his right held the tiles. In the process he noticed something disturbing. The etching on one side of the warding box had turned a brownish black, creating an odd crease with strange flourishes. He realized they were where the box had been in contact with the silvery frame.

Was it iron? No, that didn’t make sense. It was too bright in tone to be iron, not yellowish enough to be iron gilded with gold. Yet something about it had weakened the wards on the cornerstone’s new prison and that made Marius very nervous. Suddenly he wasn’t sure he could safely get the stone back to Tetzlan without its whispers getting into the mind of some innocent person along the way. Or worse, into his own mind!

Still, there wasn’t much he could do for it at the moment. He would have to take a closer look at the warding box once he was out of hostile territory. With his prize in hand he turned his attention to his elemental once more, planning to have it dig him out through the ground once more. Instead, as he raised the tiles to issue it new orders, a cord of strong, cool wood wrapped around his wrist. Startled, Marius followed the branch back to its owner, who had pulled himself up into a sitting position braced against the wall.

“Impressive, Sir Fairchild,” Marius said. “You and your sister have made this far more difficult than I ever anticipated it being.”

Near the top of the pillar of living bark a knot hole opened and a voice spoke with an unsettling, reedy overtone. “I’ll accept your surrender, if that’s what you’re offering.”

“You impress me, senor, but not that much.” It was difficult to manipulate the tiles as Fairchild dragged Marius ever closer but not impossible. Three of the elemental’s plates folded around him and the fourth slammed down on the yew branch, snapping it clear off halfway between them and just like that Marius was free. Or so it seemed.

Fairchild had also extended a branch from his other arm, the one hidden against the wall, and it snagged up the old, dead chunk of wood hanging just overhead. With shocking alacrity the branch put out buds, twigs and roots. As Fairchild slammed it into the ground his broken branch formed into a new arm and pulled a sulfurite crystal from a pocket, pressing it into the growing tree.

Except it wasn’t really a tree. It was more a mass of roots, digging deep into the ground and spreading in every direction with supernatural speed. It was an excellent guard against Marius’ planned escape. It was possible his elemental could tunnel through the roots if everything went fast enough. It was also possible the roots grabbed and crushed him. Or worse, broke apart the stone forming his elemental’s body and left him buried alive for the few minutes it took him to suffocate.

No, Marius could not risk going down anymore. He would have to go up.

Another set of commands issued by the tiles, another shift by the bedrock plates, and suddenly the four stone triangles were touching along their long edges. They began to spin like gears, tossing one plate up towards the ceiling, which its blunt, heavy corner easily tore through. This done, they shifted again, into a rough stack of stone steps that Marius was already climbing.

With only four of the elemental’s plates to stack up he couldn’t climb all the way up to the basement’s new exit. But it was a simple matter to throw his weapon and cargo up through the hole and jump through after them. A quick set of orders instructed the elemental to meet him outside. Hopefully it could get past the druid’s root wards now that it didn’t have to worry about trying to keep him safe as well.

For a brief second Marius considered doing something to try and bar the basement door. However, that ultimately took him away from the only exit he knew of and he didn’t see the point of that. So he turned towards the front of the Manor and took off in a dead sprint.

It was just as well he did, since he’d only gone a few steps when Harper’s voice came from below, crying, “One! Two! Three!”

From the way he flew up through the hole, Fairchild must have given a handhold for him to spring off of, an impressive feat of improvised teamwork. Harper’s presence filled the hallway with an angry red glow, which rapidly got brighter. Marius kept running, waiting until he felt an uncomfortable heat on the back of his neck to throw himself to one side of the hallway, letting the firespinner’s globe of flame shoot past him. The duelist skidded as he slowed, expecting the orb to double back at him.

Instead, it slammed into the wall at the end of the hallway and scattered fire everywhere. The flames took hold of the walls and started devouring the soft pinewood, rapidly burning backwards towards Marius. Shocked, he took one step back then realized Harper was still behind him. Taking his rapier in his right hand he pivoted, trying to watch the flames to one side as he studied the man on the other.

It was not a happy face that confronted him. There was a deep crimson glint in Harper’s eyes as he brandished a clipped bronze messer in one hand and an iron dagger in the other. “Your stones are very impressive,” Harper sneered as he advanced. “But we’re on my home ground.”

“Are we?” A weak riposte and Marius knew it. “Then I suppose we’ll have to see if you’re everything the stories say you are.”

Sliding his right foot forward, Marius slipped into his stance, moved away from the fire and towards danger…

A Precious Cornerstone Chapter Nine – The Second Exchange

Posted by natechen on February 7, 2026

Previous Chapter

“How far around the bluffs did you get?” Roy asked, grabbing the new stair step with both hands and giving it a hard push and pull. When it didn’t move he got to his feet with a satisfied grunt.

“Covered the southern five and the one to the west,” Georg replied, leaning forward to stomp down on the repaired section of the stairs with one foot. It didn’t bend or break, which was good. “No sign of Mr. Menendez that I could see, no tracks, no campsite, no animals. That leaves the northern bluffs.”

“I’m surprised he’d choose those for his lookout point, they don’t have a very good view of the manor.” Roy got to his feet and studied the afternoon’s handiwork. The repaired stairs were noticeably newer than the rest but otherwise they looked fine so he decided to call them fixed. “Maybe there was some element of lithomancy to it.”

“The sun will set soon,” Brandon said, sliding leftover lumber into the rack by the workbench. “We’ll have to set shifts for watching the Armory tonight. Tomorrow I want to go and search the north bluffs. I can serve as your second as well as Georg can, Roy, and I’d like to make sure Cassie is all right with my own eyes.”

“That’s fine with me.” Roy gestured towards the stairs. “Head on up. I’m going to ward the ground for the night.”

Brandon eyed the dirt floor. “What kind of ward are we talking about? I don’t think a few talismans or iron plates are going to dissuade a lithomancer.”

“All the Tetzlani with a knack for magic are lithomancers, Brandon, there’s no point in having defenses down here that won’t work on them.” Roy walked down the stairs and over to his supply shelves.

His wendigo bone necklace hung on the wall over them, between the yew branch and an amulet emblazoned with the Eternal Throne, and Roy took it down, wrapping it around his right hand. With his left he reached down and uncapped a clay jar on the floor beside the steel mirror frame. He tipped it over and water gushed out. Far more water than the jar could reasonably contain, rapidly covering the armory floor half an inch deep.

Roy walked back to the stairs holding the jar, surrounded by a small dry patch of floor that moved with him. When he reached the stairs he set it on the bottom step then climbed up next to it. Once there he reached down and touched one bone in the necklace to the surface of the water, taking care not to let any part of his hand do the same. Distant whispers seemed to fill the room for a second or two. Then the surface of the water froze with a crackling shriek, covering the ground in a layer of ice far darker that seemed right for such a thin surface.

Brandon made an uncomfortable sound. “You call that a ward?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Roy said, dropping the leather cord that held the bones around his neck. “Hungry things tend to fight over prey rather than share it. I’m not saying a spirit of famine and cold is the equal to a god of blood and stone but so far it’s kept everything looking for Huaxili out.”

“Don’t take this as a criticism,” Brandon said in a tone that suggested it was, in fact, a criticism, “but is it really a good idea to have that many hungry things running around your house?”

Roy made a pained face. “Based on what I’ve read in Pellinore’s Journal it’s probably not. I haven’t had much time to reassess the Manor’s defenses since I started transcribing it, though.”

“Well, once we’re done with this Menendez fellow you and Cassie can address them, I suppose.”

“Are you not interested in playing a part?”

Brandon gave Roy a skeptical look. “I could, but this isn’t a very good region for my flavor of magic. Too windy for large trees. Not sure I want to try and set up anything here while you have a piece of Morainhenge’s master in your trophy case, either.”

“Noticed that, did you?”

“That you had a branch of yew from someone who cultivated it?” Brandon laughed. “I could hardly miss it, although I don’t blame you for not knowing that. I wasn’t sure it came from Master Southwick until just now, that was just a guess, and I can’t begin imagine how you got ahold of it.”

“His yew tree is still planted in Palmyra,” Roy said with a shrug. “It wasn’t exactly hard. I didn’t realize having a cutting from it would interfere with your own grafts, though.”

Brandon’s eyes darted over to the branch then away towards a corner of the room. “It’s not interference, exactly. They say a firemind hears the thoughts of a flame, yes?”

“Don’t know as I’d call them thoughts but there’s definitely something inside a fire that makes itself known from time to time.”

“Well there’s a mind in trees, same as fire. That’s why they start waking, when they get to be big enough, and that’s why they obey when a druid tells them to do something. Because they have a mind, so they can obey.” He gestured vaguely towards the yew on the wall. “That is awake, even though it’s nowhere near large enough to be so naturally. It’s not hungry, per se, like your rock or those bones but it’s aware and it’s looking for something. I’d prefer not to perform any workings while it’s like that.”

Roy’s eyes narrowed, as he glanced between his friend and the old branch. “Is it talking now? Has it spoken to you?”

“No and I don’t know. All that’s clear to me is that it has a purpose and is still looking to carry it out.” Brandon shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t know how to put it better than that. Trees don’t contain their thoughts in words so all I get are impressions from time to time. I can tell you it knows there’s someone around here that has grafted a yew tree and it wants to be joined to a living root again. Beyond that I can’t say anything for sure.”

“Is it going to be an issue if you stand guard with it for a few hours tonight?” Roy started up the stairs. “I was hoping we could take turns on watch while the other two sleep.”

“I don’t think it will be an issue?” Brandon shrugged. “Honestly, that ice you just laid out bothers me more than the yew branch does but I think I can deal with that, too. As long as my grafts stay quiescent it should be manageable.”

“You’re the authority on it so let’s hope you’re right. I’ll grab a chair from the sitting room and take the first watch, so you and Georg can get some sleep.” Roy turned his attention to his employee. “Unless you wanted to join Mrs. Sondervan in town until this blows over?”

“I appreciate the offer, Mr. Harper, but I’d rather not leave you hung out to dry and I don’t think she’d approve of it if I did, either. If you need me I’ll be in my quarters.”

They’d gone their separate ways and Roy was in the process of dragging an upholstered armchair through the halls of the house when he noticed something odd. The sound of the chair moving across the floor turned from a soft screech to a rough rumble. When he stopped to check if something was caught under the legs he realized the deeper rumbling wasn’t coming from the chair. Understanding dawned and he left the chair aside, yelling, “Brandon! He’s here already!”

It took him only a few seconds to get back to the Armory and dash down the stairs but in that time things had gone wildly awry. A pyramidal shaped assembly of rocks had thrust themselves in through the ice ward. The hostile hunger of the ice had shattered one of the wagon-sized chunks of stone into loose boulders but four of them remained and as Roy watched they folded open like the petals of a flower. Crouched in the center of them was Marius Menendez.

This time they didn’t bother talking to each other or feeling out each other’s positions; they just leapt to action. Menendez dashed towards the plinth in the corner, covering the distance in a huge leap.

Roy reached out with his ability and drew the flames in scattered sulfurite crystals in the Armory’s weapons towards himself as he clambered down the stairs. By the time he reached the bottom he had a globe of fire larger than his head. However he was immediately confronted with the four stone plates Marius had conjured, which folded up into a jagged barrier across the middle of the room. On occasion Roy had managed to crack open a stone with nothing but a focused flame but these plates were far thicker than that had been and were backed by the will of an elemental on top of it.

He started to back up the stairs, thinking he might be able to jump over them. Then Brandon appeared at the top of the steps, his yew grafts already spreading over his body in a suit of bark, and swung himself down off the top stairs, dropping onto the bedrock elemental with both feet. He’d taken off his shoes for bed and his feet had transformed into a mass of roots that probed into the stone with voracious rapidity. The elemental’s focus immediately switched to him.

The heavy stone plates shifted and ground together rapidly, seeking to crush the human tree into paste, but Brandon’s incredible strength and inhuman flexibility let him slip between or shove aside all its attempts to kill him. In the process the elemental created a small gap between itself and the far wall. Roy quickly dashed towards it, grabbing a short hafted halberd along the way, and scrambled over the elemental’s flank.

He was just in time to see Menendez locking a small, elegantly engraved box closed around the cornerstone. Roy leveled the halberd’s point at the Tetzlani man and said, “Put that down, Marius.”

The other man offered a slight smile and tucked the box under his left arm as he drew his rapier and presented the point with a flourish. “Not today, senor.”

Roy set his teeth and waded forward, point circling, and the battle was joined.

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Nate Chen Publications

Project Sumter and Other Stories

“Media Literacy

A Question of Leadership

The Right Tool for the Job

A Precious Cornerstone – Afterwords

A Precious Cornerstone Chapter Fourteen – A Sudden Parting

A Precious Cornerstone Chapter Thirteen – The Third Exchange

A Precious Cornerstone Chapter Twelve – A Jealous Goddess

A Precious Cornerstone Chapter Eleven – The Burning of Oakheart Manor

A Precious Cornerstone Chapter Ten – A Rooted Branch

A Precious Cornerstone Chapter Nine – The Second Exchange

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