THE PHILOSOPHER IN ARMS
by Karen Wehrstein
"***** I’ve found a thrill like no other. Every update is heart-filling. Karen gets me every time."
- GreenGlass @ Web Fiction Guide
"***** The world-building is particularly brilliant..." - Elizabeth Barrette @ Web Fiction Guide
"Emotional verisimilitude is extremely difficult but is here achieved with an easy grace that staggers me." - Michael Thedford @ Lexy's Basement
"More often than once, we have had to remind each other that this is only a story..." - Fantasy Lover @ Lexy's Basement
Dear reader:
I have begun the process of segmenting The Philosopher in Arms into standard-length books in preparation for e-book publishing. As I complete each book's re-organizing I will make its title below into a working link, and add the cover art if I've done it yet. The table of contents beneath that shows those chapters which have not yet been sectioned. To start reading the series, click on Book I. Links will lead you from there.
NOT YET SECTIONED OFF :
Book V: Our Soul as a People (Posts 286-334: see below)
Book VI: The Sword in Yeola-e’s Hand (334-384)
Book VII: Beloved Imperator (385-436)
Book VIII: To Set Them Free (437-538)
Book IX: The House of Argentine Faces (539-639)
Book X: The Last Great Arkan General (640-746)
Book XI: What I Wanted to Do (747-current)
- 286 - My mind fell into the flame
- 287 - You will be safe
- 288 - You have no mercy
- 289 - Our way of life is dead
- 290 - Unexpected moves
- 291 - A face full of sky
- 292 - The Haian warrior
- 293 - The animal of choice
- 294 - By my own charms
- 295 - A nice day
- 296 - Like you hold your sword
- 297 - Another crucial mission
- 298 - Strong partners
- 299 - A moment that seemed forever
- 300 - Colours more brilliant
- 301 - Truly transformed
- 302 - It won’t kill me
- 303 - To be with who I want
- 304 - The limits of Accedence
- 305 - An empty space in my mind
- 306 - The fingers of one hand
- 307 - The safety of permanent cowardice
- 308 - Project Feline with Cheese Prosthetic on Fire
- 309 - The most compassionate response
- 310 - The potency of her own tears
- 311 - The third iteration of detach-and-escape
- 312 - From your own hand
- 313 - The secret divine reasons behind this
- 314 - The School of Never-Lose
- 315 - He Whose Generosity is the Bounty of the World
- 316 - If that means I die, I die
- 317 - To undertake the conquest of the Empire of Arko
- 318 - Our soul as a people
- 319 - The _semanakraseye_ of Yeola-e
- 320 - The utmost care and diligence
- 321 - The utmost pains to be fair
- 321a
- 322 - What I want is not to be asked what I want
- 323 - Let the heart guide the choice
- 324 - My preference
- 325 - A nascent psyche-healer
- 326 - I would set them free
- 327 - The strongest enemy I would face
- 328 - The sword in Yeola-e’s hand
- 329 - The mood of the people
- 330 - You will all be my warriors
- 331 - Freedom of choice
- 332 - A rare man
- 333 - As well as a carefully-wrought battle-plan
- 334 - What kind of conqueror I will be
- 335 - Expectations of the _semanakraseye_
- 336 - A glove on the hand of her will
- 337 - We must change how we did everything
- 338 - Something to really put fear into them
- 339 - A touch of help being Imperious
- 340 - Everyone has their protections
- 341 - We live under the same moon
- 342 - The mortar between the stones
- 343 - A trauma-related mental lapse
- 344 - A thousand men may dream
- 345 - Life at its best
- 346 - Even in war there are aesthetics
- 347 - First of your shadow-government
- 348 - My essence, good or ill
- 349 - True healing makes the patient a better person
- 350 - This lowly one’s entreaty for priestly guidance
- 351 - The words they intone
- 352 - The taste of Jusho
- 353 - You are still mine
- 354 - The guidance of the Gods
- 355 - What these little letters cost you
- 356 - To purify my oath with blood
- 357 - Chase and am killed and wake
- 358 - Reflections on the Yeoli Notion of Personal Power
- 359 - What I believe is the truth
- 360 - The story I write
- 361 - The dung-cart was about to tip over
- 362 - The twelfth card in a seer's deck
- 363 - Winner takes all
- 364 - I am not weak
- 365 - I heard ten thousand screams
- 366 - Your centre is in you
- 367 - The box
- 368 - The ultimate command post
- 369 - Blood under the bridge
- 370 - This isn’t going to happen again
- 371 - The white fire of the sun
- 372 - What war is really like
- 373 - Get through all of us
- 374 - The choices that should never be taken away
- 375 - Playing to the crowd
- 376 - Kill if we can’t take alive
- 377 - One of your own
- 378 - The traitor
- 379 - A thousand forms of pain
- 380 - Your starry-eyed moron’s dream
- 381 - Be back in the dream
- 382 - You would betray your betrayers
- 383 - You signed your own death-order
- 384 - Cubit Marsh on his sword-arm
- 385 - Life is sacred
- 386 - An old hand at killing Yeolis
- 387 - The price of flying
- 388 - No such thing as a perfectly safe place
- 388a
- 389 - My purview is the physical
- 390 - The worst of Arkanness
- 391 - Warriors in the sky
- 392 - Their lives as sacred as thine own
- 393 - The manners Arkans keep among themselves
- 394 - Encapsulated power and possibility
- 395 - Life was perfect
- 396 - Anticipated intransigence of the Accused
- 397 - Proof of my imperfection
- 398 - What is wrong with me
- 399 - I have turned on something sacred
- 400 - A conceptual wing-scout
- 401 - You either maintain discipline, or you don’t
- 402 - This does not make me evil
- 403 - The intransigence in question
- 404 - Yeola-e has been opened up to another world
- 405 - I wasn’t there
- 406 - Pain is part of war
- 407 - Strategic _chiravesa_
- 408 - I know who to trust
- 409 - Planning the impossible raid
- 410 - Another great increment of risk
- 411 - Like the monster-wind that freezes you solid
- 412 - More intense, like lamp-oil on a fire
- 413 - Has he driven them crazy?
- 414 - I had forgotten how beautiful the stars are
- 415 - The devil-spawn of the black twisting hair
- 416 - Mastering himself after an ordeal
- 417 - The greatest thing a person can give
- 418 - The utter vastness of it
- 419 - Freshly-killed souls ascending to Selestialis
- 420 - How did we sin, so bitterly?
- 421 - The tune for surrender
- 422 - Another thousand warriors can die
- 423 - The almost that lost an Empire
- 424 - Open in surrender
- 425 - Forcible conversion
- 426 - You are Imperator
- 427 - A face upon the multitude
- 428 - The executioner’s axe-blade over the neck of the condemned
- 429 - Superior and infallible and perfect
- 430 - Whose eyes glazed before they could shed a tear
- 431 - A voice from the sky
- 432 - All rules are off
- 433 - For the sake of everything that is sacred to you
- 434 - We who write the first draft
- 435 - That is power
- 436 - Destruction to destruction
- 437 - The candles floating on the water
- 438 - Let Arko purge its pain and anger with me
- 439 - Can a person be healed of who he is?
- 440 - He’s been merciful, considering
- 441 - Could I look at myself in the mirror?
- 442 - Transfer of care
- 443 - Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e, childraper of a suicide
- 444 - It was a deficient tool They had
- 445 - The hand that bore the scythe
- 446 - Be it known to all by these presents
- 447 - You are completing the deadly circle
- 448 - What do the mad fear most?
- 449 - Die for Arko
- 450 - The son who kills the father
- 451 - My own conscience requires truth
- 452 - Blessed Hand of God
- 453 - The Decree of the Ten
- 454 - A pustule of life inside rock
- 455 - As if he were eating his Haian
- 456 - Shefenkas’s truth
- 457 - My answer might be insufficient
- 458 - You are free
- 459 - When you fully love
- 460 - Our connection to the Gods
- 461 - Purveyor of the Lingerie Imperious
- 462 - Whatever the traditions are
- 462a
- 463 - This is going to be sooo interesting
- 464 - Something untoward
- 465 - A dream I was fast forgetting
- 466 - A desert of ultimacy
- 467 - The heart and soul of the Mezem
- 468 - You’ve outdone yourself in madness
- 469 - Fik Yeola-e
- 470 - That momentary lapse of foresight
- 471 - Send it all up in flames
- 472 - What they’ve unleashed
- 473 - They wanted to give Arko a semanakraseye
- 474 - Not everybody has this much temptation
- 475 - One who is no longer worthy
- 476 - We fail because we are human, imperfect
- 477 - Terrible things happen
- 478 - Another means of committing suicide
- 479 - Too much of certain others’ company
- 480 - A Yeoli-style four... six-way marriage
- 481 - To do our duty
- 482 - All the Gods are powerful
- 483 - Seemed... past tense
- 484 - Quite a throw of the dice
- 485 - There’s nothing wrong here
- 486 - To have happiness in marriage
- 487 - The most important thing I must show you
- 488 - I should only thank you
- 489 - The Art of Not Speaking
- 490 - How to combine these ways that are so opposite
- 491 - True and complete trust in the beloved’s love
- 492 - Trusting him to survive danger
- 493 - More huge than any human mind can grasp
- 494 - The Haian wrist-timepiece
- 495 - The last of the Mezem darkness
- 496 - Life is short
- 497 - The limits of human possibility
- 498 - This is too *fikken* complicated
- 499 - The simple and human mistake
- 500 - Your best for the world
- 501 - His once-in-a-lifetime chance
- 502 - I will do the same to you
- 503 - We can never do it alone
- 504 - Those who feed the world
- 505 - I was nothing, the Goddess everything
- 506 - Do we have breath still to sing?
- 507 - A Chirel of glass
- 508 - Closer to invincible
- 509 - Parts of life they usually hide away
- 510 - Last of the Ten Tens
- 511 - Tears are the blood of the soul
- 512 - The heart of the spirit of Arko
- 513 - May you have learned something
- 514 - Lies spread thoroughly and efficiently
- 515 - To ascribe pure evil is to underestimate
- 516 - Firm enough proof
- 517 - It’s all the other way round, now
- 518 - The son of a common whore
- 519 - How deep her love
- 520 - The beauty of courage
- 521 - You will accept what I have said
- 522 - If you are confident of your champion
- 523 - You bare your soul when you duel
- 524 - Let him strike me down
- 525 - I will try my best not to die
- 526 - Greatness can come in a thousand forms
- 527 - I let you be you let me be
- 528 - Everything will be well
- 529 - I didn't kill
- 530 - His son, my son
- 531 - The man who is doomed and the man who is not
- 532 - To apologize to every Arkan
- 533 - Only the stubborn and cynical continue
- 534 - That brilliant head of yours
- 535 - Our religious bull*shen*
- 536 - A cleaving of both of them from true human society
- 537 - The dictates of his own principles
- 538 - Hardest when life is most alive
- 539 - Once my body is mine again
- 540 - The real her for the first time ever
- 541 - All-Spirit grant that they chalk it
- 542 - There is a Fenjitza
- 543 - I want to understand
- 544 - The House of Argentine Faces
- 545 - Torn between savage and gentle
- 546 - That is how you approach life
- 547 - Life is healthier when no one is trying to kill you
- 548 - This courage was the family honour
- 549 - The net of statutes that bound them
- 550 - To know they are loved by their Mother
- 551 - Hoodwinking someone right in front of him
- 552 - Overjoyed to see an elevation
- 553 - To be lovable
- 554 - Enough love for me in her heart
- 555 - Worth it for the loving times
- 556 - Children of an un-Yeoli shade
- 557 - It is this that truly makes us who we are
- 558 - Through the grinder together
- 559 - Her choice
- 560 - The two worlds crashing impossibly together
- 561 - And we had to be cursed wrong
- 562 - A great federation of peoples
- 562a
- 563 - Chevenga Peacemaker
- 564 - Reminded of my imperfections
- 565 - His mother as in a dream
- 566 - Cultural sensitivity
- 567 - Musical, like an exotic poem
- 568 - Normal because it is universal
- 569 - Skewered for keeping it secret
- 570 - The fate of a genius
- 571 - Love cannot corrupt
- 572 - Every woman expects to lose the first
- 573 - To ask what must be asked
- 574 - A master at this
- 575 - Such a rift between men and women
- 576 - It’s in talk that silence is slain
- 577 - I am not worthy
- 578 - Penance for his pious sin
- 579 - The river of love that flows from Your loins
- 580 - My big day
- 581 - The Enlightened Followers of the Deity on Earth Chevenga
- 582 - The right to enact law by mere utterance
- 583 - What cannot be changed must be endured
- 584 - Nothing to worry about
- 585 - A traitor twice over
- 586 - I had grasped at power
- 587 - Who was this cruel man?
- 588 - You will just exude innate Kaninchaness
- 589 - There is never forever
- 590 - Comely enough without it
- 591 - Who am I to fight the Gods’ will?
- 592 - I feel a great deal in your presence
- 593 - Arkans think sex is evil
- 594 - Claiming me as their own
- 595 - The Voters Feminine of Arko
- 596 - In the traditional way
- 597 - His heart was in it
- 598 - The rate of men murdering women
- 599 - You Whose Mercy is the Salvation of Women
- 600 - Have a taste of what she feels
- 601 - The classic strategic mistake
- 602 - I never did this in the Mezem
- 603 - Knowledge of first aid could save a life
- 604 - A plume of flame from Her lungs
- 605 - All of what we all want
- 606 - Accept us as we are
- 607 - Disagreement doesn’t require contempt
- 608 - A wrong in this which holds the solution
- 609 - It gives me lava-blood
- 610 - The bad is less than the good
- 611 - A windstorm blows through Hayel
- 612 - Set yourself free of all that *shen*
- 613 - A crime against Arko
- 614 - Alesinae
- 615 - I eat of the fruit of Her in ecstasy
- 616 - I am become One with my Beloved
- 617 - Ama Kalandris gave it to you
- 618 - Words of love and nothing but
- 619 - Some insight into how she became that way
- 620 - The God has spoken to me
- 621 - A vagary of fate
- 622 - Thoroughly married
- 623 - Half my time with him
- 624 - Business as usual
- 625 - *Chiravesa* is always just, and thus a two-edged sword
- 626 - That was only my heart
- 627 - My mother’s andirons
- 628 - The water and the heart that fails
- 629 - Sometimes your ways are shit
- 630 - It is the fate of such pawns
- 631 - Love between you and her extinguished
- 632 - The heart-slash of grief
- 633 - An education in vilification
- 634 - I have betrayed all my children
- 635 - The mob cannot see its way clearly enough
- 636 - A chill through the entire public discourse
- 637 - One word to him
- 638 - Your luck in love has been bad
- 639 - Flames lengthening from my skin inward
- 640 - Life can be any other way?
- 641 - I dream of our son, flying free now
- 642 - A giant bowl of blood
- 643 – How fast that can reverse
- 644 - *Shen* or Imperator
- 645 - We’d apply to mercy-kill him
- 646 - Fly back to me
- 647 - You are this era’s champion
- 648 - A price he is willing to pay
- 649 - The most strenuous Yeoli dances inside my skull
- 650 - An entirely sensible person
- 651 - A drop of spit in the sea of deaths
- 652 - This self-destroying streak
- 653 - A spider might well eat me tomorrow
- 654 - True consent
- 655 - What exactly happened to me that I don’t know
- 656 - You are still so *kyashin* barking insane
- 657 - How far would they go to silence me?
- 658 - Unique in its grace-notes of pasturage, borborygmus and combustion
- 659 - Shefenkas’s chief minions have their thumbs up their asses
- 660 - How it was done
- 661 - I am *mourning* him
- 662 - To drink his way out of being who he is
- 663 - The scribe in paper-pusher’s clothing
- 664 - You must remain in safe ignorance
- 665 - The whole *kevyalin* pile
- 666 - The habit of secrecy due to threat
- 667 - The amnesiac
- 668 - He handed you your metaphoric head
- 669 - Nothing so smooth and elegant
- 670 - A similar cast of mind
- 671 - We lay our hearts in the other’s hands
- 672 - Only you can destroy yourself
- 673 - Military habits
- 674 - The deputy is always more assiduous
- 675 - Genius is close to madness
- 676 - To have my hands on the reins
- 677 - The sisterhood of the sword
- 678 - Writing reveals one’s true heart
- 679 - I can’t imagine Arkans not *fodai*ing on that
- 680 - You think you are immortal
- 681 - I hold Shefenkas’s life, and uncountable others
- 682 - Is freedom a good thing?
- 683 - Goddesses, whores and girls with spectacles
- 684 - Power corrupts
- 685 - A person with a beautiful soul
- 686 - Excitation of emotions induced by the situation
- 687 - To be naked-hearted to Arko
- 688 - It gave voice to something in my heart
- 689 - He loved you
- 690 - What’s best for Arko
- 691 - More than a gnat’s fart for her grief
- 692 - Let us tie you to the mast
- 693 - Let him rest in Selestialis
- 694 - How he treats the people he loves
- 695 - Reconciliation
- 696 - You have forgotten who your people are
- 697 - You believe in love
- 698 - Both romantically debonair and unrecognizable
- 699 - My lineage is excellent
- 700 - What *do* men want?
- 701 - What we both feel
- 702 - Trust and responsibility
- 703 - A leap off a cliff
- 704 - Experience bears your cynicism out
- 705 - Something wrong with you that way
- 706 - You’ve done the shit you’ve done
- 707 - The happiest day of my life
- 708 - To capture the nature of the national soul of Yeola-e
- 709 - See why I love her?
- 710 - Your mind has to be so twisty
- 711 - I have had to feign remembering
- 712 - I could change the smell of his farts
- 713 - Jump with relish into plotting my political doom
- 713a
- 714 - Always I have pitied your enemies
- 715 - To turn its people toward our own way of governance
- 716 - Greater confidence and inspiration in her heart
- 717 - The sex that is perhaps less weak than it seems
- 718 - The loving loyalty of our position
- 719 - The happiest day of my life
- 720 - The sun is westering on my life
- 721 - You can’t be me
- 722 - Customs can confine just as much as laws
- 723 - A man can’t be a real healer!
- 724 - You must obey her in all things, as is right
- 725 - Careful what you ask of the Gods
- 726 - Skewered by the bitter spear of truth
- 727 - That power that is so sacred to us
- 728 - You will just exude innate Kilalulananess
- 729 - What are you overly wed to, to be so afraid?
- 730 - Gods grant us the ability to divine your mind
- 731 - You have set them free
- 732 - We must *fodai* to keep him
- 733 - A nightmare come true
- 734 - The material manifestation of spiritual truth
- 735 - Why are you doing this to us?
- 736 - I am truly defeating you now
- 737 - Catching a corpse
- 738 - He is auguring backwards
- 739 - Fourth Shefenkas Shaearanoias will cease to exist
- 740 - Either way, it was hope
- 741 - A wind that throws you toward the stars
- 742 - The vote of the people
- 743 - *Sitae desan* ~ *semana kra*
- 744 - They’ll have a father
- 745 - The most important thing in the world
- 746 - All good things to you
- 747 - Now I know what we are truly faced with
- 748 - I never promised to let him go easily
- 749 - Souls touch through eyes
- 750 - Easy cause has easy cure
- 751 - The love in you is so strong
- 752 - I will always know that one such as you could love me
- 753 - There is no point to anything
- 754 - Forgiving feels good
- 755 - Can’t I just have it easy and die?
- 756 - It’s the mix that does it
- 757 - I have been where you are
- 758 - There’s nothing left of me
- 759 - It’ll help him know his sacrifice was worthwhile
- 760 - The tears of fear
- 761 - Havoc of the heart
- 762 - To demand perfect justice from your feelings
- 763 - So you know not to take it personally
- 764 - I give you back to yourself
- 765 - The world was just going to let me
- 766 - I don’t know the etiquette here
- 767 -The Hearthstone *In*dependent
- 768 - I wrote dreams with that pen
- 769 - Lies, like a lot of what was said
- 770 - It’s *sex*… the idea is to *enjoy* it
- 771 - Seize the coals bare-handed
- 772 - We have lost so much
- 773 - The courage of rising lust
- 774 - Our square is cross-braced
- 775 - That bad feeling is always right
- 776 - You are no longer free
- 777 - A dream that you cry when you wake up from
- 778 - Her course should be just as clear
- 779 - The most insane idea I’ve ever seen
- 780 - The father of my spirit
- 781 - You are bleeding from the soul with it
- 782 - A lunatic’s dream
- 783 - Our relative positions
- 784 - It’s a child who expects that
- 785 - *Semanakraseye* of the Earthsphere
- 786 - No uncertainty whatsoever
- 787 - Maybe an impossible thing
- 788 - After
- 789 - In the clutches of our free and wanton ways
- 790 - Here I am, laid fully open
- 791 - Those who see the possibility will take it up
- 792 - Intrigue seems to be a national pastime
- 793 - Regret nothing, do nothing you’d regret
- 794 - Like a hook pulling in my heart
- 795 - This one pervaded all
- 796 - Take a breath, get up again
- 797 - You can give them so much
- 798 - Finally, I found peace
- 799 - The hook in the heart of public service has a barb
- 800 - Your heart on a platter, swimming in your lifeblood
- 801 - The girl I’d played with twenty years before
- 802 - You rule here
- 803 - You are free to do all these things
- 804 - It will all turn out well
- 805 - Like sun breaking through cloud for the first time in a year
- 806 - It’s so lonely, trusting no one
- 807 - Doing things too hastily
- 808 - Freedom is natural to people
- 809 - This strangeness after we were so familiar
- 810 - You will die happy
- 811 - You are here because we wanted you
- 812 - I thought of you to the end
- 813 - Love makes people really stupid
- 814 - The heart loves to feel compassion more than contempt
- 815 - Is it possible for mortals to manumit Gods?
- 816 - Our greatest strength comes by love
- 817 - Of course a Goddess may own your body
- 818 - The sphere the Gods made through my hands
- 819 - The Void-sword
- 820 - We are One
- 821 - This paragraph, it seems, is farewell
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