Dying Light: Latchkey Hero – The Story So Far

On the 14th of April this year, my Latchkey Hero series has turned seven (7) years old and I am very proud of it. And to celebrate that, I decided to whip up a master post/index for everything I have so far.

Latchkey Hero

“On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.” – George Orwell

The fall of Harran robbed man of its humanity, and Zofia Sirota of her innocence. Finding redemption, with the city rotting away around her, seems to be a pipe dream at best, until a man falls from the skies and turns futility to hope. Either that, or he’s about to make things a whole lot worse.

Part 1: Good Intentions

Part 2: The Road to Hell

Part 3: Call it in the Air

Side Stories

Hide and Seek

In which Kyle Crane finds it horribly difficult to stay on target and regrets having put on jeans for the day. Plus, there’s a game of Hide and Seek in the Tower’s lower levels that turned a little grim.

The Gunsmith: A Lady’s Favour

There’s a little girl in dire need of modern day magic, and still Crane tells me: “Stay here.”

Before Harran

Kyle Crane loves his job, and he’s damn good at it. Obviously, since he’s still around to take more contracts, and when the GRE approaches him for one very particular deployment, he finds it very hard to say no. But how do you prepare for Zombies? It’s not like there’s a ton of handy training material available, so Kyle decides to improvise.

Season 02: Volatile

Harran sits at the brink of a grim and unsteady future. Beaten by a ruthless storm and at the mercy of an uncaring outside world, the Zone now looks to the Tower and its three leaders for what hope it has left. Brecken, Lena, and Crane, their names now revered within the concrete walls for their shared bravery, tenacity, and dedication.

But only one of the three is insane enough to set out in search of that desperately needed hope: an abandoned shelter beneath the luxurious domes of Old Town, where whispers herald a much greater threat than the remnants of Rais’ legacy.

Part 1: Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked

Part 2: Thousand Mile Night

Part 3: Ashes of Eden

Part 4: Through the Fire

Epilogue: Happy Birthday

Chapter 21: Happy Birthday

Season 03: #SaveHarran

Hidden in the sprawling outskirts of the crumbling Harran metropolis, sits the key to a cure. Supposedly, anyway. Not like it matters much, since Kyle Crane is done waiting for the outside world to fix this mess and hasn’t ever shied away from trying his luck where there’s often none to be found.

Part 1: Insert Coin

Part 2: No Gods or Kings. Only Man.

Part 3: Nothing but a straight line

Part 4: End Game

Epilogue

Chapter 24: The way the World Ends

The Sequel: Monsters, We.

a paper crane, a paper tiger, and a metal scorpion strung up on a red string, with the crane at the top and the scorpion last. they hang in front of a wooden door.

There are three kinds of people in this collapsed world. The many who’ve accepted their lot. The rest that claws for survival at any cost. And those rare few who continue to live unabashedly—shamelessly—even with their humanity a fragile thing.

Aiden finds Villedor at what he hopes to be the end of a too-long search for what’s left of his family; an end to a life he lived alone, one muddy, dark road at a time.

It’s all he’s ever known and he’s far too young to be so weary.

Kyle Crane, his Paper Tiger by his side, seeks Villedor in a final effort to turn back time on a curse that threatens to unravel them both; to make them forget what they so stubbornly kept on living for.

It’s far too hard to fight and, sometimes, forgetting is a tempting mercy.

April 13, 2023

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APHELION: Episode four, Disaster Bound

In a world where tech runs off the concept of one’s soul and where dragons steady cosmic scales, heroes are shaped in the shadow of an ancient grudge.

Looking for a free-to-read cyberpunk-lite/aetherpunk with a side of zombie apocalyse, soul magic, and slow burn? Plus, a hero with too much heart and too little sense, a sassy cat, and lots of hope in dark places? Then look no further.

You’ll get to meet this charming dork:

a very vexed Varrett Vild Vickers, by Martina Belli

Horizon’s Crown was an Earther triumph; a stage at the frontier of known space, a city of hope and dreams and infinite potential.
     Then one man bit another.
Now, under the watchful eye of its orbital island, it straddles the line between dead and dying; a city of nightmares and endless sorrow.

Varrett Vild Vickers belongs into a pilot’s chair. He’s meant to dodge asteroids, to race dragons, not chase credits so he can pay rent while HC’s major demographic clicks its teeth at him and tries to eat his face off. But it’s fine. Really. He copes.
     Or that’s what he tells himself, all the way until a woman falls from the sky and turns his already upside-down life very sharply sideways.

Armed with nothing but her worst-kept secret and a ledger of lies, Sophya Soulwright tricks her way into Horizon’s Crown, looking for redemption and for meaning to a life she never held dear.
     What she finds instead is a city trying its hardest to live, and a man who courts death every step of the way. He’s infuriating, tireless, and he’s her only hope.

They wish they’d never met.

Episode One: Good Intentions

Episode Two: Welcome to Horizon’s Crown

Episode Three: Any Other Way

Episode Four: Disaster Bound

Chapter 20: No Way
Chapter 21: Rude
Chapter 22: White Noise
Chapter 23: The Soul Eater
Chapter 24: Forward

And more to come every second week!

February 27, 2023March 26, 2023

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Dying Light: Latchkey Hero [complete on my shelf]

I posted the first chapter of my Dying Light Fan Fiction in April 2016. Back then, the last thing I expected was to one day have all three seasons printed and living on my shelf. They’re gorgeous.

But here they are. Season One is the chunkiest at 403 pages. Volatile came out at 329. #SaveHarran concluded at 322. *dialup noises while Taff does math*

That’s 1054 pages! I am stupidly proud. Next stop? Finishing and printing Aphelion’s first book!

Based on Dying Light by Techland.
Words by me (can read them here).
Covers by the fantastic @nikoschrissis
Typesetting by @hermit-writes

January 2, 2023

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Aphelion! Progress!

When I began to write Aphelion I hadn’t honestly believed I’d get near its end. Or even around that hump in the middle. Which is why I’m so surprised that I finished drafting the entirety of episode 4 yesterday and how there are only three chapters after this until the book is entirely finished.

It’s a bit overwhelming, really.

November 28, 2022

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APHELION: CHAPTER 19, Mercy

This concludes Episode Three!

Marlijn knew she’d come to her last tomorrow.

She’d waited for it. Day by day. Hour by hour, even, and she’d expected it to come much sooner than this. But now it was clear. There’d be no more tomorrows for Marlijn Boerhof.

She pressed her forehead to the hard wall, her searing hot skin desperate for the cool touch of concrete.

It had taken two days for the fever to hit. Another for the tremors to follow. If she’d not been the one shivering and seizing on the cot, she’d have been fascinated by the delay. Ecstatic. Those who fought Deimos for that long were rare; if only some good could come from her clinging on so tight.

Marlijn’s fingers twitched.

No. No good would come from her fighting.

Her stomach cramped.

Her leg muscles spasmed. Her joints, her bones, her spine, her tendons; they sang with agony and there was a constant thudding against her ears. With it, came a faint, high pitched wavering tone that would not let up. And the air— the air, it tasted like barbed wire: metallic, sharp, painful.

Marlijn wished to weep.

But He would not let her.

Marlijn knew she’d come to her last tomorrow not only because her body had begun to change, but how He had come to be a constant in her thoughts. He crowded them. Him and his Endless murmurs and whispers.

Mercy, she heard.

Mercy.

The word bared itself like a bleached bone being broken in half. Mercy that she lived. Mercy that He allowed her thought. Mercy for everyone He’d lead to ruin.

She couldn’t shut him out, and ever since she’d heard Him for the first time— ever since she’d begun to change —Marlijn had wanted to end.

He had refused her. And continued to. Over and over again, He gripped her spine with cold-clawed fingers and made her watch— her eyes wide open —as her body failed to do as she told it to. He stopped her from slamming her head against the wall. From tearing open her arms. He held her prisoner in the failing, tattered shell of her body as much as Dr. Kobvik Eli held her prisoner in his pens.

Marlijn pressed herself tighter to the wall. A mewling sound wormed its way up her throat.

Oh, what she would give for tears. But He did not allow her those, either.

Today we wrap up Episode Three. Which. You know. Is a big deal for me. That puts Aphelion’s first draft at 107170 words altogether, which I did not expect to happen. But here we are 😀

Aphelion will now be paused for a while as I draft Episode Four. I don’t know how long this will take, but oh GOSH, I am maybe three parts/episodes from ending book one and this is EXCITING.

My excited bouncings aside though, please leave all the comments you’d like! Ask me questions, theorize. Anything at all, including pointing out inconsistencies. Like when Varrett told Sophya about how only Castle Guard, Monarch, and Runners are allowed to carry weapons, but we see Ellen with a shotgun. WELL, I HAVE AN EXPLANATION FOR THAT which will make it into draft number two. Ellen’s shotty is loaded with rock salt or an equivalent of it :3

Anyway.

Thank you to anyone who has read this far. Varrett and Sophya and SIN (and Col, and Ellen, and Gabriel, and Sebastian, and our tortured Marlijn) will return soon.

ALL THE LOVE,
Taff

September 10, 2022

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APHELION: CHAPTER 18, Turn the Pages

In which Sophya is bothered by the bumbling of one Varrett Vild Vickers.

Day 6

3rd day of the storm

I have a job.

A tiny drum had been sketched underneath the declaration, with two even tinier drumsticks tapping at its top. The sketch was hasty, the proportions terribly off, but it got the job done. So Sophya thought, at any rate. Drumroll, please she’d written in heavily leaning cursive next to the hasty sketch.

It’s composting sorting.

I’ll start tomorrow.

Sophya wished she had more to write. Or maybe she just wished she had something meaningful to write. A triumph of a sort, maybe, about how she’d gotten closer to Krisi; or that she’d unravelled the mystery of her dreams; or, rather, that she’d unravelled herself from one Varrett Vild Vickers, who remained stubbornly tangled with her and SIN and refused to let go.

None of that.

She’d not even gotten any closer to figuring out if whatever she’d seen back when Pete had died; that thing she’d thought to be a figment of her overtaxed mind back then and which’d come to ruin that theory when something near-identical had appeared in the crowd on Castle 5’s bottom floor.

SIN remained unhelpful on any of the above. The most she offered was a variation of I have got not the faintest. Yet.

Yet.

Yet.

SIN’s patience was a horribly endless thing. No doubt brought on by how she’d lost count of how many hundreds of years she’d been around. Why feel the pressure of time when all you had was time?

Sophya didn’t have that luxury. Neither did Krisi. So, yet? That was awfully hollow.

Presently, Sophya pondered the lot of that, and then wondered why she wasn’t writing down any of it. Why the pen hovered a hair’s width from the paper, rather than scribbling out all her frustration. Why she’d committed to only a few lines after a day spent being useless.

Voices rose in the living room behind her. They slipped under the door, mixed into the constant din of the storm, and told her that V had returned from his escapades up and down the Castle.

And because she didn’t feel like being asked how she’d been and didn’t fancy asking him, she hurriedly turned off the lights on the desk, bumbled out of the chair with a clumsy lurch, and scurried off into bed.

By the time the door to the room opened, she’d pulled the blanket over her ear and was pretending to be asleep. Which meant a lot of even breathing while her ear got tickled by the sound of careful footsteps drawing nearer and then turning into squeaky creaks as he climbed the short ladder and hoisted himself into the bunk above her.