Ardent_Tears

A Quick Update

Hello Everyone! The release is well underway and I hope you are all enjoying it. If you are and are finding yourself wanting more, you can get the ebook from amazon at the following link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CKM9N76B, or by searching for Ardent Tears on your local Amazon storefront.I'll also greatly appreci...

Chapter 15: Pandemonium

Ædarik felt cold from anger and the ebon flow of night as he followed the two shrouded men garbed in thick, black gambeson. He wanted to kill them, to gut them mercilessly for what they did. In the long hours he had waited, listening to the poor girl’s cries, he knew true torment and that was nothing compared to wha...

Interlude: Lordly Discoveries

A melancholic lord of perhaps thirty looked down at his indignant son. “No arguments, Ædarik. Until the King decides to extend his protections to the East, you will live with your Aunt and Uncle in the Capital.”“I don’t wanna,” the boy complained.“Speak properly, boy. You are a lord, not some uneducated pe...

Chapter 14: The Plan

The caves rumbled slightly as another distant earthquake reverberated across the land. They were increasing ever so slightly in frequency with each passing month. It wasn’t quite at a rate where everyone had noticed. At the same time, it was easy to recognise those who had. They were ever so slightly more fearful tha...

Interlude: Broken Silver

Agony. That is what Kiriin felt as her torturer worked his craft. She was strapped to a chair and she was adorned with a crystalline crown. He played a grim melody on the crystals that Resonated deep within her soul. Each note gave rise to a different kind of pain. The only way she could hide from it was by retreating ...

Interlude: A Voice Unheard

Tehri woke up screaming; a silent cry that no one could hear. Night terrors. She had been suffering from them for almost a year, ever since she had woken up in that strange room. They haunted her every single night and they would wake her without fail.She had nothing. Her family was gone and she was alone; at night, at...

Interlude: Aftermath

Caer Luen trembled against the might of a terrible storm. At first, it seemed like any other windstorm. The small border fortress had seen many during its long watch over the Ru'eni Empire and the Pass of Changing Winds. The current siege upon its walls, however, was far from standard. Had the keep not been built t...

Chapter 13: Ardent Awakening

For many long arduous hours, Rowan was tortured by the Silent Sisters. As they worked their grim art, a warden, one of the educators, droned on with an unrelenting tirade of blame. Each word hammered on that Anri’s death was her fault, that Rowan’s unwillingness to act and her feeble attempts at comfort led Anri to...

Chapter 12: Loss

For two weeks, the Silent Sisters continued to torture Rowan, trying to break her, and for two weeks, they failed. Amran remained strong of mind in the face of adversity, as always. With Seres, they had slowly started introducing more and more physical elements to her torment. Somewhat fortunately, though, she had been...

Chapter 11: Pain

Three days had passed since Anri returned to the cell and Rowan was almost entirely healed. It had only been seventeen days since the strange symbol had been carved into her back. To think that such a large wound would heal without any serious complications was the definition of a fool’s dream, let alone having it al...

Interlude: A Silent Voice

For what felt like hours, Tehri ran, her body growing weaker with each passing moment. She was confused and terrified. Everything that had happened since she woke up made no sense. Cruel people had surrounded her while she lay with her hands bound and mouth gagged. They wanted to kill her or sell her and they nearly di...

Chapter 10: Stoic Introductions

The days that followed Rowan’s rather awkward first encounter with the Ferran boy passed much as the rest had, except for the embarrassment that she felt towards the matter. After some encouragement from Anri and Seres, she worked up the courage to approach him again and apologise for her awkward behaviour.This time,...

Chapter 9: The Caves

For several days, perhaps even a week after the attack, the raiders rode hard and fast. It was difficult for Rowan to say for sure, especially with the canvas sack over her head.After the first day, it became even harder when the raiders replaced the sack with several layers of cloth, wrapped tightly around her eyes an...

Cover Reveal

Big News and Cover Reveal

Hi Everyone!Ardent Tears Book 1 is currently being reviewed for publishing on Amazon. This means it's only a matter of time before it is released. As such, I'll also be releasing chapters here as well. I'm still working out how many advance chapters are going to be made available relative to the public rele...

Patreon Insights: Calendars in Ardent Tears

Hello Everyone! Whilst I'm very busy with the final edits to Book 1 and planning the rewrite of Book 2, I did have an idea for this Insight and I promised to not delay it too much. As for why I'm covering the various calendars of the world? Well apart from me thinking it's a neat bit of worldbuilding, there...

Patreon Insights: Education in Llen Færa

Hello Everyone! With my recovery from COVID nearly over, we will be starting back with an Insight into the education systems that are in place for the youth of Llen Færa. All in all, it it a fairly basic system that is notably different in style to what many of you might expect. For the most part, I will be focusing o...

Recovery Update

Hello Everyone! Just a quick update. I'm almost completely recovered from COVID, though I have been treated to my time of the month, so things could be better. Fortunately, I'm well enough to write again so I'll have a new insight out either later today or tomorrow. My injury claim is also being finalised a...

Quick Update

Hello Everyone! I unfortunately have myself corona and it is knocking me into next week. As such, I won't have any new Insights this week as I need to focus on getting better. I do have some potentially good news, however. My solicitor for my injury claim emailed me last friday saying that the defendant has reviewe...

Patreon Insights: Gifts of the Lover

Hello everyone! Slight update before I begin. I found out yesterday that I should be getting an update on my injury claim by the end of next week. At this stage of the claim, this hopefully means our offer will be accepted or I'll be given a counteroffer and we'll finally be able to move forwards, which is exce...

Patreon Insights: Languages of Ardent Tears

Hello Everyone. I know this is late and I'm sorry for that. I've had a busy week. With that in mind, this is going to be a rather short Insight breaking down the language families in Ardent Tears.First we have the language family that the big three (Midiran, Ferran, and Særan)belong to which are collectively k...

Patreon Insight: Solar, Lunar, and Terran Gifts

Hello everyone. Today is going to be a rather small Insight as I breakdown the three Gift types and how they differ. This isn't the first time I've covered gifts and it certainly won't be the last, but before I mostly looked at the Lunar Gifts. These are the Gifts that are received by humans, Ferrans, Mirie...

Patreon Insights: Religion

Hello! Today we will be looking at the topic of religion in Ardent Tears. It's a little late because I ended up rewriting the entire thing. With the divine being a known entity, most people on Illyria are religious to some but there are some that are iconoclasts or alatrists. These people are very much a minority a...

Patreon Insights: The Birth of Llen Færa

Hello again. Today we will be concluding this trilogy with the birth of Rowan's homeland. Out of the three nations, it is by far the youngest, at least in certain respects. It is also the one with the least to cover as much of the background information is in the other two Insights. There is still plenty to look in...

Patreon Insights: The Birth of Ferran Llyr

Hello again. We are here for part 2 of this trilogy with the birth of what is now the Principality of Ferran. Before we go into that, I'll go into some details about the region that don't tie into its eventual evolution from a land occupied by various tribes and clans to the Principality of today.The first of t...

Patreon Insights: The Birth of Særis

Before I start this Insight, I must apologise for the delay. My sleep schedule was all over the place last week and to top it all off, I was sick amongst other things that certain Patrons will relate to. To keep apologies short, however, I will now move on to what you are all here for, the latest Patreon Insight. For t...

Patreon Insights: An Introduction to Commerce

Hello! As I said at the end of yesterday's Insight I'm going to be pacing myself with future Insights. I may have gone a bit overboard with the magic series, so hopefully this will be a little bit more digestible. As for what I'll be covering today, I'll be looking at commerce. Specifically, we'll b...

Patreon Insights: Magic Part 5 - Awakening

This is it, to conclude the first miniseries on Magic we will be looking at the most relevant system in the story, Awakening, and, by extension, Ardents and Stoics. Now, much like I did with Soulforging, there will be quite a few details that I will be avoiding here in favour of covering it in the narrative. There will...

Patreon Insights: Magic Part 4 - Soulforging

To end off this first week of Patreon Insights we'll be looking into Soulforging and what makes it both special and a rarity. However, before we start, I will point out that this is a system that is not referenced in any real way through the course of the preview so some of you may consider this to be too much of a...

Slight Delay

Today's Patreon Insight is going to be a little late because I'm currently suffering from a migraine and I don't want the quality to suffer as a result. I'm currently about halfway done and I'll be going back to it once I'm able to think straight again. Next week I'm going to do my best to h...