In this week’s update to my ongoing serial fiction, Magnus and Elara talk. In a quiet, sunlit corner of a park that isn’t real, she offers Magnus the one thing she can: the truth about the violation she committed, and the tragedy that shaped it.
Magnus listens. He does not forgive — not yet, perhaps not ever. Instead, he does something harder. He takes back the only thing that was ever truly his to give: the choice of who he becomes next.
I wasn’t sure how well this goes down, but my thought process: if you had an alien intelligence who was imprisoned in a lesser form and given instructions to torture a human by body modification…and was resisting her orders by using creative or malicious compliance, and her species biology allows for easy transition between sexes, she would do what she did to Magnus. Does not make it right, but my intention was to indicate someone with incomplete information, an alien point of view, and in desperate conditions will have to make a shitty choice to prevent a worse outcome.
Read the latest chapter → https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/150567/a-hundred-ascending/
Thank you for being part of this journey. It means more than you know.