BOTTLENECK OF DREAMS Cover (+ Excerpt) (Patreon)

Done in Photoshop a while ago for thumbnail purposes. I fixed up the typography for the larger version (and by "fixed up" I mean added my name... because I'd forgotten to do that).

A short version of Bottleneck of Dreams is available here, but I'm thinking of releasing an extended cut to the $3 tier in the coming months... we'll see if I get motivated to clean up the long version.

EXCERPT:

Myth remembers King Trestan as a beast of a man, who scaled the tree with his bare hands. In reality, Tresta had the benefit of bone magic, an art developed much earlier than most scholars assume. Reaching back, she unhooked a sword that had once been the spine of a serpent like Sazuma. Smaller, perhaps, only a few meters long. The razor spines that lined its back could cut through stone and, if the climb went to plan, Tresta hoped they would be strong enough to kill a living member of their species.

Mages had ground the snake’s skull to powder and mixed it with the ink now tattooed into Tresta’s skin. As the sword uncoiled, the tattoos tingled and she felt each vertebra as if it were her own. Her sights locked on a knot twenty-some feet above her head, she slung the sword skyward like a whip, then exhaled, letting the vertebrae spring apart. As the weapon hit its full length, she guided the uppermost spine to the knot, where it drove into the bark and stuck.

After giving the weapon a tug to make sure it would hold, Tresta gripped the handle tight and drew the vertebrae back toward each other. The sword contracted, pulling her with it. In a heartbeat, she had flown fifteen feet upward, where she caught herself with the balls of her feet against the tree. Drawing her ox horn dagger, she stabbed it deep into the trunk before withdrawing the serpent’s spines from the knot above and whipping the sword upward again for a new hold.

A pair of ropes connected both dagger and sword to her belt, so that, even if she slipped, she hopefully wouldn’t lose either weapon or fall to her death. Of course, there were no sure things in the world anymore, but she would rather die trying to get to Biya than face the slow, pitiful end that awaited humanity below. There was nothing left but this, nothing but the climb—sword over dagger, over sword—as, presumably, the sun climbed in the sky at her back. For the first day in her life, Tresta couldn’t see the merciless ball of fire, but it was still present, gradually brightening the cloud canopy as the day progressed.

Read the full story >>