Wyatt

The story continues in the Library: Terra Apokalypsis It just dropped today.

The Harper Household, 6:30 pm EDT "Holy shit!" Jimmy had just turned the TV on and watched a few minutes of news about the upcoming solar event. "Thomas, get down here NOW. We got to go to the store! Bad stuff's happenin!" Thom came down from the upper half floor where the bedrooms were. "What's going on?" Jimmy let him know about the Sun and how this event could hurt millions of people. "This must be why Mom and Dad can't come home right now. I don't know what they're going to do against frick'n solar flares, though! Anyways, we gotta go get some water and food that don't need to be kept cold. Stores might not be open for a long time, and we gotta get there before they close." Fortunately the Publix grocery store was only two blocks away. And Thomas still had his wagon in the garage. He probably hadn't had it out in over two years. "I feel kinda dumb pulling this old red wagon. You know I'm nine, right?" Jimmy replied, "You like to have water to drink? Food? We gotta get any survival stuff we can get! This is really bad, Thom, and being a little embarrassed don't even count as a problem right now." The store was crowded, but not crazy-panicked crowded. Yet. All the regular bottled water was gone, but they still had lots of gallon-size distilled-water cartons. They also picked up bags of beef jerkey, Twinkies (... if anything is going to survive an apocolypse ...) bandages, anything that looked like it might be useful and they could fit in the wagon. No one was at the checkouts. Jimmy saw the manager, Mr. Pearson, just sort of in a daze. "Hi kids. Just take it. It doesn't matter, just take it. I have a really bad feeling that money won't be much good tomorrow. In fact, all the employees are going home in half an hour to be with their families. We are moving everything out from the back room so folks can easily get what they want. We're leaving the door open when we leave. It would just get busted open anyways." "Geez, Mr. Peason, I hope you and your family are going to be okay.. Leaving the door open makes a lot of sense!" As Jimmy and Thomas were walking home, thick clouds had begun to form in the sky. Florida weather is often unpredictable, but these clouds had come from nowhere. They were thick and getting thicker. "Spooky. Really spooky. Jimmy, I'm scared." Jimmy gave his bro a quick hug. "So am I. Let's get home and hope Mom and Dad make it home before hell gets here." "That's strange," Jimmy thought, "I never used religious emojis before."

The Harper Household, Cocoa Beach, FLorida, 4:07 pm EDT When Jimmy Harper's Mom called, he was surprised to learn that neither of his parents would be home this evening. They both work at NASA and have worked regular hours for many years running. She was not sure when they would be home, but it might not even be tonight. He was asked to make something for dinner for he and his little brother, Thomas. Being 13, he had never been "in charge" of the house for any extended time before. He wished he had remembered to ask what was going on, but the situation was just too unusual to fully comprehend. Plus she seemed to be in a hurry. For some reason, she closed by asking him to go buy a lot of bottled water, as much as he and Thomas could carry. He thought, "I hope everything is okay." Then he shouted, "Thomas, what do you feel like for dinner? Mom and Dad are going to be late, and I gotta cook something." Thom shouted back that anything would be fine. Deciding he had time, Jimmy did what any young teen would do, pulled back out his smartphone, opened Twitter, and sent:

Well, golly. Myself... in Shattered Reflection (MISR) closed with a The End at chapter 56. (Note this was also known as Parvenue Book 4.3 chapter 45 and Brynnhollow Book 7 chapter 14. -- The guy writes in parallel, what can I say? ) I applaud Multimapper for both a wonderful story and the drive to author the novel at a rate very close to one chapter per week. 👏 (For the past several months Roland has been doing something similar with Sands of Time, releasing a new chapter every two weeks. Geez, how lazy am I?) One of its unique aspects was in continuing three of his older works (Shadeside, Parvenue, and Brynnhollow) by allowing them to develop into a common universe. The latter two had had a character crossover at one point, but they were still separate stories. By adding an entirely human new character, FBI agent Shawn Roberts, and following him for the duration, something more than a crossover developed. Hmm, "entirely human" may be understating at the end. Let's just say "things happen" when you encounter vampires, witches, cursed shape shifting witches, demons, angels, elves, bigfoots (bigfeet?), and various hybrids. It would be surprising if Shawn had remained ordinarily human. They didn't "save the world," but three hidden parts of it are much safer now. I wish Multimapper the best, and hope he takes a well-earned break. Not a really long one though! Whether his next endeavor is something entirely new, the next "volume" (in Japanese light novel terms) of MISR, or to top off one or more of his CSU stories, it is sure to be great. Maybe he can get a translator to write a Japanese version of MISR and have it actually be a light novel. Popular light novels are often adapted as manga and/or anime. I could go for that! (The Japanese people accept a wide range of settings in their fiction. It doesn't have to be specifically Japanese in nature. American gangsters, European royal houses, alien worlds -- they have broad tastes, just like other cultures.)

Well darn, nobody posted, so I didn't realize a new chapter (27) had been released on 14 Jan. As is the norm, it contains concurrent story lines, both very engaging. Expect a graphic battle sequence, new characters, and hot forges.

And the story is approaching a crescendo after many chapters of captivating build-up. Demons and angelic beings working together (sort of), faeries and bigfoot striving along with them for success of the project, witches planning and guiding and casting the magic, a 3-D intelligent shadaw making out with a human in the corner, and the FBI monitoring the doors. Nope, this ain't fun and strange at all. 😎

GoM, Thank you! I have wanted a list like that but was too lazy to make one. After quick perusal, the only important information that might be considered missing are primary Watch characters Hontel reacted with in Kyle Aaron's The Kandric Saga. I realize that they are not actual characters in Sands of Time yet, but since they placed him with Xavier's group and he reports to them, they will likely be significant. Also, a couple chapters back in Sands was he not speaking to Watch folks at the Tower? I don't remember if we had seen those specific folks before, but Hontel's crossover presence seems to be quite significant. We aren't sure yet whether he will turn out to be ally or foe, but my gut tells me, regardless of what The Watch eventually decides, he will be ally. I just noticed you wrote "Swordsman (from TKS C7)" in his Field specialization. Presumably that means "The Kandric Saga, chapter 7". (It does; I just looked it up and the character Aster is assuring Hontel that his Swordsman training can continue.) I'll need to do further research to find out the specifics of who, when, and where for the Xavier assignment being given to Hontel. I've been planning to reread TKS soon anyway.

Roland, it is great to hear you plan to regularly add to Sands of Time. It's been a great story, and with frequent new chapters, I'll even be able to start remembering who is who again. 😏 I'm hoping the dragons figure out how to reinvigorate both lost knowledge and the depleted state of magic in general. I suspect the two will be related.

MM calls it "sideways", but I've been thinking of it as "2-dimensional". Before he started work on any element of Myself... in Shattered Reflection, I had read all the components, but didn't realize they would eventually be brought together into the same world. As MISR grew, I reread the preceding story parts, and everything has fit together seamlessly. For those not following it, MM has been faithfully adding a new chapter every week since somewhere near the beginning of 2018. He missed a week or two when he moved (which I think he mentioned in the end notes to a chapter before the move), but otherwise his output has been like clockwork. I liken the reading experience to what the first readers of stories like Great Expectations and a Tale of Two Cities felt when the next chapter appeared in the weeklies (?) of that era. Of course, MM has the advantage of using a word processor instead of hand-writing it all. (Well, Dickens did have the advantage of getting paid. ? ) Anyway, it's still ongoing, so if you're in for a great weekly experience, catch up and get on board!

I'm with everyone else. This is a great story. At chapter 17 it is at a point where the major problems have been resolved. Even if Multimapper doesn't get back to it, I feel satisfied. It was fun reading a ghost story where the main "ghost" wasn't a ghost but the main story surely is a story!

Thank you, Sean. This is an excellent story and very engaging. You may have lost track of one plot point. Early on (ch.3), you mentioned that Jason used to enjoy swimming at the YMCA, and he even liked to help train the younger kids. But I don't think his enjoyment of that sport ever came up again. It's not a big deal -- it just caught my attention because I really like swimming.

This was an enjoyable and interesting story. Thank you, Arthur.

I really enjoyed this story. It was exciting and had very good characterization -- of course that is helped a lot by the characters being engaging. Cynus has planted some nice seeds for future story(ies). I'm glad to hear that he has already been working on the next volume.

I was surprised by the ending as well, but I wouldn't characterize the ending as having "little hope". Sad, yes, but Ben had known he would have limited time with Sioni, and had been preparing for his departure since making Sioni co-owner of their house. Plus Sioni clearly plans to continue his life, and at age 20 he is fully prepared materially and emotionally to enter a third phase of what will be a productive and fulfilling life.

Arthur, thank you for this story. It was very well written and interesting. I see there are two more stories involving Prince Vladd. I'm thinking the first one will begin with the consequences Vladd faces from the Council for violating the old taboo. Somehow I'm guessing that those consequences will be relatively minor. Since you never mentioned what the five states were that made up Vladd's territory, I'm going to guess. Basically I know that a jet can reach Washington DC from there in about 90 minutes, and that ground travel between the five states does not seem to involve more than a few hours at most. Also, the states seem to be contiguous. So my guess is the Northeast -- Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. I wanted to include Connecticut, but that would have been a sixth. (I suppose I could have cheated and treated Maine and Massachusetts as the one state they originally were -- Vampire maps being very old and all -- but getting Conn. in is not that important. ? ) Assuming Vladd's mansion was centrally located in Mass., then Seaton's mountain bunker "three states away" might have been in West Virginia. I have one extremely minor nit that seems to affect a number of authors sharing their work without editors (and some even with editors. ? ). In chapters 16 and 20 you wrote "loose" (not tight) when you meant "lose" (not win). Searching the site, I can tell you are aware of the difference; these two instances probably slipped by while you were lost in the telling of your great story. (Also did search with "loose". Bing seems to handle the "site:" parameter better than Google.)