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Post by Libby on Jul 28, 2005 15:39:53 GMT -5
Well, we're back in the weird and wonderful world of Whisper City again! Cross still hasn't truly got a handle on it all yet, has she?
Nicholas must really be enjoying himself...although the idea someone's resurrecting the Titans might cause a crease in his elegant attire!
Red seems unsually dismayed...maybe she's regretting being so hasty about taking on the Devil's job!
Can't imagine what you've got in store but it'll be a blast!
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Post by MisterAnderson on Jul 28, 2005 18:09:41 GMT -5
Alright Wolfie! Cross is back!
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Post by JenGe on Jul 30, 2005 10:51:19 GMT -5
Wooohoo!!! Cross is back!!!
Wolf I really love the mix of gothic and mithos in this piece. Like I've stated before your writing is just my style and I always have a difficult time finding authors that fit it.
My favorite line...", now I’m CEO of Hell and I haven’t got a bloody clue to be honest – how’d it come to this?” I'm going to have to use that one on my family sometime when I'm really ticked. ;D
So when's the next one??
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Post by Witcher Wolf on Jul 31, 2005 6:16:57 GMT -5
Well, we're back in the weird and wonderful world of Whisper City again! Cross still hasn't truly got a handle on it all yet, has she? Nicholas must really be enjoying himself...although the idea someone's resurrecting the Titans might cause a crease in his elegant attire! Red seems unsually dismayed...maybe she's regretting being so hasty about taking on the Devil's job! Can't imagine what you've got in store but it'll be a blast! Cross' quite a complicated character in a way, but she's terribly black/white and blinkered. You could drag her through Hell and back and she'd still miss the obvious. Red has to really deal with a serious change to her lifestyle. But she really didn't have a choice in that regard, it was the Devil's job or ....
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Post by Witcher Wolf on Jul 31, 2005 6:21:03 GMT -5
Wooohoo!!! Cross is back!!! Wolf I really love the mix of gothic and mithos in this piece. Like I've stated before your writing is just my style and I always have a difficult time finding authors that fit it. My favorite line... ", now I’m CEO of Hell and I haven’t got a bloody clue to be honest – how’d it come to this?” I'm going to have to use that one on my family sometime when I'm really ticked. ;D So when's the next one?? Whisper City is a really odd mix of styles, there's a definite mythos but it doesn't quite gel in places - it's more akin to a darker version of Gotham from the new Batman when I look at it. I could imagine for instance Whisper being filmed though in a similar way to Sin City. I think you'd really get a blast out of Hestonia to be honest Jen, especially since the book's finished (pending any editing that needs doing to it) since the style is similar in some ways to the one that I'm using for Cross. The next installment is actually pretty close.
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Post by Witcher Wolf on Jul 31, 2005 6:22:04 GMT -5
Alright Wolfie! Cross is back! To quote a friend of mine: Hell yeah! There's more bang for your buck coming bigstyle.
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Post by Witcher Wolf on Jul 31, 2005 7:15:58 GMT -5
Cross' Story
The helpful ‘ting’ of the elevator announced its arrival as it stopped with a sudden force, jerking Sam to her knees almost, she grumbled darkly and shot an acid look at Nick – who missed it.
He swept out of the Hell building with a flick of his long coat, now a man on a serious mission. His exit from Hell was far less traumatic than Sam’s introduction to their arrival, he found the door and stepped through – she followed quickly enough and was relieved to find the real walls of Whisper City waiting for her in the corridor.
“Home sweet home,” she whispered and touched the slick painted wall.
“Not for long, but let’s have lunch,” Nick grinned widely and ushered the woman out of the building as if nothing had happened, right out into the bright sunshine.
“It was night?”
“Yes, and now it’s not,” he started to cross the street towards a helpfully placed diner.
“We can’t have been there that long?”
“Time’s a bit odd in places like that, days can be years and years can be decades or something like that,” Nick shot back helpfully and pushed the door open, the bell jangled and he chuckled again. “It’s the chaotic nature of the place, you never know what you’re going to get.”
Cross felt herself breathing a long sigh of relief when reality seemed to be pretty much normal in the diner. She gave it a quick scan with her modified eyes and there were no odd readings or strange radiations.
“It’s a real diner?” She heard herself ask the question.
Nicholas Winter said nothing and found himself a seat in one of the vacant chairs, it was obvious that his mind was racing far ahead and he was deep in thought. As she joined him a whisper of traffic went slinking by the window in a slew of displaced water, then all was silent again.
A waitress came and took her order, and only then did he stir to ask for a black coffee and a plate of waffles. She had the full breakfast; there was a gnawing hole somewhere in the pit of her stomach she needed to fill.
The sun began to burn through the heavy cloud cover and lit the tarmac outside in patchy reflections of light, beams lancing down from the heavens to play in the rain washed gutters and over the awnings of shops.
They ate in silence as the uneasy atmosphere slowly began to lift, no one else in the diner bothered the pair and the usual clientele frittered their day away as seconds turned to minutes that dripped into hours.
“Nick?” Cross had finally been driven to speaking first, her own thoughts still fixed on the here and now and a desperate need to have her questions answered – her Police training.
“Yes Samantha?”
“Oh so you are alive? And I’m not sharing lunch with a corpse?”
“Very much so,” he replied with a small grin. “I’m sorry I was elsewhere for a while, reporting in.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t worry about it for now, just another thing about me you have to learn,” the Agent said ordering another cup of coffee, this time with a little milk and sugar.
“I have a feeling there are books and books written about you,” Cross replied stiffly and turned her head to examine the rest of the diner before fixing her eyes back on her partner.
“I promised you answers,” Nicholas Winter’s smile held a slight edge of mirth about it. “You quite sure you are up to understanding them?”
“No,” she admitted. “But that’s not going to stop me asking anyways, you should have guessed that by now.”
“Stubborn.”
“Exactly,” she tapped the edge of her empty mug with a fingernail.
“Greek Myths,” the Agent gave her an askance look and put his coffee mug to his lips drinking ever-so-slightly. “What do you know about them?”
“I know they exist and they’re a myth, that’s about the limit. I didn’t really bone up on any kind of stuff like that. Even though I work in the S.I.D. which I still consider a joke,” she lied, bluster and bravado to keep her Ice-Queen shell intact.
“Do you now?”
“For all I know you could have drugged me and forced me to hallucinate the whole damn deal?”
“Interesting, tempting but as the Bishop said to the Actress, not my style,” Nicholas drank more of his coffee. “Trust me Sam, there are things out there that make what you went through seem normal.”
“Now that I can’t believe,” she laughed and shook her head. “You have got to be kidding me?”
“Illogical things that warp reality until your mind collapses inwards and your brain evacuates out of your ears,” his voice took on the patient tone of a teacher or mentor, quiet, reserved, as if he were speaking of a great secret. “Most of the time you don’t see them because there was a shroud between your world and ours, but no longer. Not since the Logrus stone was opened and the merger happened.”
She looked at him blankly and then began to laugh again. “It’s all a bit too much fantasy Nick…if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“I think I understand what your problem is Agent Cross,” Nick finished his coffee and grinned a little. “You’re afraid that everything you claim you don’t believe in really exists and that invalidates your belief in nothing, let me tell you Agent Cross…Agnostic or Atheist – it doesn’t matter to them, they know you exist and burying your head in the sand won’t save it from being ripped off.”
That stung a little and the worst thing of course was that the guy was right, he’d hit on Sam’s problem with all this. She was too afraid to believe because everything she’d built, all her mental walls, would come tumbling down the moment she admitted there was more to life than 24-7.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said finally and looked down at her empty mug. “I got into this line of work to disprove the supernatural – it’s a big joke to me even though you say it’s real, everything you’ve shown me so far could be an elaborate setup – for all I know you could be an actor and that little meeting with Red was a charade.”
“It could be, but down inside that mechanical logical ice-crusted mind of yours Agent Cross,” Nicholas voice was soft but had a core of steel. “Is a little girl that’s scared of the bogey-man…the thing under the bed…and the Monster in the Closet?”
She couldn’t answer for a while, the man’s last comment was more than a question it seemed to be a very poignant assertion.
“Bastard,” she hissed after a long time. “You know me better than I do.”
“I know you all.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Remember who I work for?” Nick chuckled and passed his mug to a waitress as she swished on by their table.
“God?”
“No remember, God’s a Hitman now.” His grin was shark-like and he tapped his cigarette packet lightly. “Heaven and Hell are Corporations, just like you have here in Whisper City – two of the biggest players in the Multi-verse.”
“Multi-verse?” yet more food for Cross to chew on mentally, she blinked a couple of times as her eyes began to shift focus – a hulking shape barely seen lurking in an alley outside of the window, raising the point of a long rifle.
“Yeah, that’s a story for another time; don’t want to fry your electronic brain.”
Cross would have offered a snort and a retort, but she sprang into action and hurled Nick to one side just as the diner window shattered into a thousand shards blowing inwards with tremendous force. Her hard-lined full-wired reflexes saved her from both the bullet and the lethal shrapnel.
On his back lying flat on the floor Nicholas Winter looked across to the Agent and reclaimed his hat.
“I owe you one.”
There was a screech of tires and something sped off into the distance before both of them could move, Winter idly thought God for a moment and then wondered who in their right mind would hire a Hitman like that to take him down, he dismissed that line of reasoning for a while and peeked over the edge of the diner’s broken sill.
“Clear,” he heard Cross say.
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Post by Libby on Jul 31, 2005 7:52:11 GMT -5
Nice chapter...gives me time to catch my breath! Not sure Cross is really ready for the full-blown Nicholas Winter version of life, death and everything else before, in between and afterwards, but hey, it'll be fun watching her reactions!
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Post by Witcher Wolf on Aug 1, 2005 12:58:42 GMT -5
Life the Universe and everything inbetween *chuckles*
She might actually get it soon however, but I won't say anything else.
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Post by JenGe on Aug 1, 2005 19:12:04 GMT -5
Whisper City is a really odd mix of styles, there's a definite mythos but it doesn't quite gel in places - it's more akin to a darker version of Gotham from the new Batman when I look at it. I could imagine for instance Whisper being filmed though in a similar way to Sin City. What is interesting is both Sin City and Batman Begins where released after you started writing this so I always pictured Whisper City as that of The Crow. It really does fit all of them though... About the new installment...Kewl!!! Action!!...more please!!! ;D I know I'll love it but with trying to get moved right now I hardly have the time to work on the site and be on these boards...hopefully this will change soon!!!
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Post by Witcher Wolf on Aug 3, 2005 7:23:41 GMT -5
Whisper City is a conglomeration of several inspirations, that's changed over the years as I've worked on it. It does owe a lot to things like The Crow, Dark City and my generally twisted sense of imagination.
The mage net for instance is particularly strange and I don't think I've used it yet in a story.
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Post by Witcher Wolf on Aug 8, 2005 11:39:39 GMT -5
08th August Update
“Evidently,” Nicholas was on his feet now and dusting off his elegant attire, removing specks of broken glass. “A Hitman, that’s a first....well not quite.”
“You seem to be quite flippant about it; you got some love of being shot…a death wish perhaps?” Cross couldn’t help it but she was grinning in a half-teasing manner at the agent, who continued to shed bits of glass.
“I have a unique relationship with death,” the agent grinned back and made sure his hat was adjusted to the right, perfect angle. “The answer will present itself my dear Cross in time, but until then we have things to do…and as they say in my business – time waits for no being, immortal or otherwise.”
Outside the diner window life went on as if nothing had happened, a couple of street cops wandered over with the intent to discover what was going on, spotted Samantha Cross and decided to vanish into a nearby alley rather than speak to her.
“Williams and Johns,” she said and frowned. “That’s all I need, ah good, they’re bugging out.”
“You do have an acidic reputation,” Nicholas reminded her with a grin. “And I need to fix our good friend’s window.”
The owner was just about to inquire in the usual loud-mouthed, angry vendor way, when one’s shop window is lying in bits all across the inside – just what the hell was going on, upon hearing Nick’s words he shuffled a foot and let out a loud cough.
“Sorry to bother you folks, but what just happened?”
“A Hitman,” Cross said and flashed her badge into the man’s face. “An attempt on my friend’s life here – we’re going to be looking into it, the department will pay to have your window replaced.”
“No need,” Nick Winter turned and fixed the man with a bright smile, “you don’t mind if I exert some of my will on that broken glass do you?”
“Magic huh?” the diner owner frowned again and then gave a shrug. “Do what you want pal, just get it fixed.”
“This I have to see,” Cross took up a chair across from the broken window and clicked her vision through several variants, until she hit on an idea, she began to run a small tweak program lodged in her skull – an experimental one she’d been working on in her spare time, one that would reveal supposed etheric based fluctuations.
Nicholas Winter understood the shift and ebb of magical energies, especially now they’d been unleashed and focussed through the hundreds and thousands of tiny ley lines that criss-crossed the globe, making it possible for something like the Mage.net to exist.
Cross saw it all as the new vision mode flashed into being, it appeared across her HUD in a flash of silver and white. The woman witnessed the lines of force being manipulated like a conductor with his baton ensures a perfect performance from the whole of his Orchestra, and in the case of magic not only did she get the effect – she got the light-show as well.
Just as the glass rose from the ground and began to slot together piece by piece, Samantha caught the lines of force connecting everything being pulled like an ever-changing web into the space that was once the window and after only a few seconds – was again.
She sat silently for a long time replaying the whole thing over and over via the HUD, looking for any rational explanation and finding none. “It’s real,” was all she could finally say and repeat herself three or four more times. “Magic is real.”
“Ah?” Nick chuckled and guessed what was going on, “figured out a way to see what was happening then? I thought you might, pretty spectacular when you shift reality around like that.”
“It is,” she was like a little girl again for a moment, everything Sam had ever thought about magic had just been blown out of the water – in this sideshow there were no wires and no little trap doors. “I always thought that it was a joke…a false…fake you know like they used to do way back in the history-vids you get shown…Séances…muslin cloth.”
“Trust me,” Nicholas Winter beamed with his inscrutable expression and tipped his hat. “It gets even stranger from here on in, Olympus waits.”
“Huh?”
“You know…the seat of power of the Gods?”
“You said something about that before, something about the Multi-verse,” she stood up and turned off her vision mode for a moment. “I saw something else as well, when I looked at you.”
“Oh?” Nick was now really curious and he softened his expression.
“Wings…”
“I keep them hidden, they’re an awful magnet for children and animals in public,” he replied flippantly and turned to leave the diner giving a wink to the owner, who just scowled in the typical fashion of such men.
“What’s it like, being you know?”
“Don’t know, never been a: you know.” He said and offered the woman an apologetic smile. “I’m Sorry, my sense of humour gets away from me some times.”
“It’s ok, you don’t have to answer if you can’t or won’t,” she said and fell into step by the side of the other agent. “I was just wondering that’s all, it’s got to be a lot different to someone like me right?”
“Well…it’s a loaded question, every being lives their own life and I’m no stranger to that line of thought – so for me it’s an interesting existence, with its up and downs…but for someone like Hope who was the last out of Pandora’s Box – well – she’ll tell you differently,” Nicholas Winter’s grin was once again golden against the backdrop of the City streets.
“More riddles?” Samantha sighed softly and put her hands into the pockets of her trousers. “What did I expect?”
“Never ask an Angel for a straight answer Sam, you’ll learn, it’s not in our way to tell you anything without making you jump through hoops…like ask me if you’re going to die and all I can tell you is – well, duh!” He laughed a little at that and then when he saw the look on the woman’s face he couldn’t help but loose some of that emotion.
“Death’s not a bad thing Sam, it’s thinking there’s nothing at the other side of it that is the bad thing, but come on, no more talk of maudlin things – we have to get to Olympus and see if any of the Gods are awake.”
Before she could respond he started to step with some purpose towards the very same alley the other police had entered about fifteen minutes before, leaving Samantha Cross alone with her thoughts and only a few steps behind.
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Post by Witcher Wolf on Aug 8, 2005 11:43:56 GMT -5
(Note: going to try and do at least 1 small update per week now)
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Post by Libby on Aug 8, 2005 13:09:56 GMT -5
Glad I caught this before going on hols tomorrow.
Is Nicholas developing a soft spot for our Sam? Can't imagine where that might go...and there's still Red.
Looking forward to the Whisper City version of the Gods though!
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Post by Witcher Wolf on Aug 8, 2005 14:46:00 GMT -5
Nicholas has never really been a cold hearted bugger, he has a soft spot for most people especially when he has to tell them that black and white are really, pink and polka-dot grey.
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Post by mawa on Aug 10, 2005 14:10:25 GMT -5
I read it now from the very beginning. Very well written stuff. The mix of natural and supernatural is... weird but enjoyable. Looking forward for more. And yeah - I really like the characters
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Post by Witcher Wolf on Aug 11, 2005 19:07:15 GMT -5
Thanks MaWa :>
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Post by Witcher Wolf on Sept 28, 2005 7:05:24 GMT -5
After chatting to MaWa a bit yesterday, here's the next part of Cross' story...been a while coming.
“So how do we get there?” The woman asked checking her gun and a few other things as she finally broke the silence.
“Wobble spots,” Nick answered with a wickedly sharp grin stopping to examine part of the stonework.
“Say again?”
“There are places in this world that don’t quite sit static, they’re ever moving kind of like a jelly…when you find one it can do all sorts of things.” Nick continued to probe the wall and tapped a couple of times against the concrete.
“Wobble spots…” Sam repeated and watched her new partner with a fastidious expression noting the motion of his hands.
“Kind of like this one,” Nick said in a triumphant manner and slapped his palm against the solid surface; it sent out a ripple of concentric circles that broke the stone into a dozen fragments all of them falling inwards with a universal sigh.
Sam was stunned for a moment as she saw the tunnel forming beyond the broken stonework, her eyes snapped to her default vision setting for dealing with such things and lines of force radiated outwards like tentacles pulling at the fabric of reality. She shut it off quickly and quipped.
“Too freaky…”
“Ladies first,” Nicholas Winter tipped his hat and gestured with a hand towards the yawning/gaping portal. “Watch the first step though Sam, it’s a little like being at the top of a gigantic rollercoaster.”
“Thanks for the warning,” she gritted her teeth and stepped into the whirling mass of energy, her foot found no purchase and quite literally she fell after a moment’s panic. “Shit!”
Nicholas followed in and shut the door behind him grinning a little; he was used to this kind of travel so he just went with the flow of cosmic power, letting it pull him along to where he wanted to go. He could see Sam was flailing around in the vortex ahead of him, so he took pity on her and grabbed the woman in his arms.
They exchanged a look; hers was one of thanks for the vortex made speech almost impossible. It was like standing beneath a rushing waterfall without the obvious effects of the water’s chill and the wetness.
Time ticked and whispered on as they travelled between worlds in the ever-shifting tunnel of coruscating light, all the colours were there and some that are reserved for non-human eyes to see.
After an indeterminate amount of chronological dickering that Nick ignored as phases shifted around them both, the wild ride ended in a rather bright whirling display of phosphorescence.
On the other side of the dimensional wormhole they now stood in a large grey rocky area, where a massive mountain loomed ominously against the backdrop of a cerulean sky.
“Let me guess, that would be Mount Olympus?” Sam asked tentatively and squinted to pick out details.
“Indeed,” Nick grinned widely and started to follow the obvious rocky pathway towards the great mountain. “Oh and don’t expect it to be like it was in the Legends…times have changed and as the mortals move with the passage of old Chronos, so do the Gods.”
“Right…” Sam was having one of those ‘whatever’ moments and Nick’s words went in one ear, kind of tickled her brain and shot right back out the other side. She was well and truly overwhelmed by all of this.
The path was long and winding right up until the point they reached the base of the mountain and helpfully placed was a bright yellow ski-lift and a small booth.
“Hello!” Nick breezed at the short irritated little fellow inside the booth; the small being gave him a poisonous look and snorted back.
“What do you want?”
“To ascend Mount Olympus and talk to Zeus?” Winter replied hopefully and put down a few bucks as insurance, to get the beady-eyed fellows attention. It worked, and meanwhile as he slipped a few more bills onto the counter he read the man’s nametag.
It quite simply said: My name is Loki.
“So that’s where you got to, a little further removed from being tied to a big tree and having a snake drip venom on you, isn’t it…little man?” Nicholas had never been fond of this fellow and he wasn’t going to start now. “Sam, meet Loki…a big, well, little troublemaker from the Norse Pantheon.”
“Norse, but isn’t Zeus and Olympus…Greek?” she ventured.
“Exactly, so that begs the first question why you are here and the second…what did you do now?”
“Nothing, why the fuck does everyone think if the world’s about to collapse that I was involved,” the dwarf snorted and spat out the back of the ski lift booth. “I’m moonlighting, the Norse Gods got fed up of having to tend to the Great World Tree Amusement Park and decided to give me a new job – it’s still a bloody punishment because I have to deal with tossers like you!”
“I see,” Nicholas looked to Sam and then back to Loki. “Well don’t let me keep you…we’ll just be ascending then?”
“Here’s your tickets, now fuck off!”
“Same old Loki,” Winter quipped, caught hold of Sam’s arm before she did something rash and dragged her towards the waiting chair. “He’s really a sweet old softie!”
“Bugger you!”
“I see what you mean,” Sam couldn’t help but laugh as she settled beside her guide. “This gets weirder by the second…did he say Amusement Park?”
“I’m afraid so, with the commercialisation of the lands of men and women of course,” Nick grinned again. “The Multi-Verse well, followed suit.”
“So I should expect?”
“Expect: the worst!”
“That’s comforting.”
Loki pulled the lever and was glad to be shut of the pair of them, he opened his copy of Playbeing and poured through the pages within, there was something highly arousing about the right placement of etheric energies in the line and flow of a static elemental that made him hot under the collar.
The lift rose into the cloudy side of the mountain and moved at quite a pace, when they were near the top Sam’s enhanced hearing picked out the hammering sounds of a pulsing and quite erotic beat.
As the lift broke through the cloud she saw something that she’d never forget, for against the wondrous canvas of the beautiful sunlit sky and landscape was a giant building, it was styled in the manner of all Greek architecture, made of white stone and set with many columns. There was just one thing out of place, a giant multi-coloured sign that proclaimed.
Olympus Nightclub: Father of all
“Oh good Gods,” Sam closed her eyes as the neon flashed behind her lids and the music rose to a giant thumping beat and rhythm
“Gods yes, good…that’s probably a subject for debate,” Winter replied archly and regarded the sign with a mixture of amusement and horror. “They have certainly dusted since I was here last.”
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Post by Libby on Sept 28, 2005 11:54:59 GMT -5
*splurgle*
A ski lift to the top of Mt Olympus! This instalment was a riot...giggles all the way through.
Nicholas is really rather enjoying knocking Sam for six-six-six isn't he?
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Post by Witcher Wolf on Sept 30, 2005 3:33:37 GMT -5
Wild isn't it ?
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Post by mawa on Oct 8, 2005 6:28:24 GMT -5
Wild isn't it ? Yes, it is Your world is weird, sometimes it's hard to get used to it. But it's distinct and vivid. I enjoy this particular story and I'll be following it closely, even if I sometimes forget to comment
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Post by Witcher Wolf on Oct 11, 2005 11:45:01 GMT -5
Thanks MaWa More to come from this and Fate's Hand.
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