#EMERALD SEAS

[terrafey]

Emerald Seas by @cryptotheism! Read the story in its entirety here, or start from the beginning with Amber Skies.

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[cryptotheism]

She awoke to a boxcar full of corpses,

which was damn lucky, because it meant she now had a one-way train ticket to exactly where she wanted to go. All that was left to do was pass the time.

The student took inventory of her body. It was the first thing she knew to do in case of catastrophic injury, but the ritual of it was almost meditative now. Start at the bottom, work your way up.

Feet: Sore from walking. The leathery sheathe of mutagenic skin that ran up to her shins was largely unfeeling scar tissue at this point. They looked and functioned like a pair of high-topped hiking boots, except permanent and a part of her body. They were a rough custom job, designed for traversing the pools of acid that dotted the necrotic swamps common to her homeland. Home. Not much left of home now. She was getting sidetracked.

Legs: Also sore from walking, but less so. The musculature was hers, but the skeleton was reinforced with carbon-steel after a fall when she was little. Shock absorbing hydraulic femurs were nice for someone who did as much walking as she did. Skin was necrotizing again. Gotta get that replaced. Maybe one of the corpses is fresh enough to provide a graft.

Pelvis: Mercifully unfeeling. The surveyor had grabbed her by the hips. Skeleton was completely replaced a long time ago, but she could feel a hitch in the joint of her left leg whenever she moved it just so. An easy fix but time consuming, and not the sort of work to be done on a moving train. No necrotization here, at this point it was all synthetic. Uterus was completely original, not that it meant much. The little bundle of braided tubes that assisted her endocrine system remained stapled to her skin. The jangling was annoying, kept getting stuck on her hatchet, thus, staples. Fluids were looking a little dark, she must be dehydrated.

Torso: Felt fine, aside from the strain on her spine from carrying her things. Even with the augments, spines in general were just poorly constructed. Flesh was scarred, lots of burns, but mostly original. Both clavicles were removed and replaced with cargo sockets. She rolled her shoulders, it seemed like everything was working well. Breasts and sternum had been removed too, replaced with subdermal bulletproofing. She had spent extra for the good stuff there. One solid hand-ground piece of sloped armor. Getting shot in the lung was a lesson you only needed to learn once. Heart was completely mechanical. She even had a backup in her bag just in case. She traded the old lung and the breast tissue for that.

Right Arm: She rolled back the sleeve of her heavy coat and stretched her arm, watching the little electric motors dance. It was strong and dexterous, with half a dozen small tools built into the length of her forearm. No need for skin. In a pinch she could perform everything from network intrusion to basic surgery. Most of it was covered by the sleeve of her heavy coat. The amputation was above the elbow. She had leased her original arm for the current mechanical one when she was working on the pit crew for for an order of knights. She ended up keeping the arm.

Left Arm: She liked her left arm. She was proud of it. The trademark of a sythetimancer. It was pretty. Biological and mechanical features blending seamlessly together. Coils of veins and circuitry making intricate braids up her arm terminating in perfect Fibonacci spirals. Softly bioluminescent blood, filaments formed from calcified nerve tissue, synapse clusters under crystal clear de-pigmented bulbs of alpha-keratin. She concentrated for a moment, allowing the whirls on her palm to twist and readjust themselves with a tingling sensation. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, all recombining into butane. She snapped her fingers, igniting a tiny flame, letting it dance along her fingers for a few moments burning and repairing the flesh as she went, spirals parting and coalescing like leaves navigating the twain of a gentle river. They looked like the little shell fossils she found at the white desert when she was little. Memories. Loss.

The spirals in her hand began to twist and pulse, little corkscrews of bone began to form, growing outwards against the thin layer of biosynthetic skin. It hurt. She winced, and regained control a moment later. Careless. She shook her arm, and the flame on her finger went out.

Head: Still a bit hazy from the pain. Where to start with the head? Neck. Parched. Currently being warmed by a scarf with a length of handmade maille hidden in the folds. Rebreather was working well because it was made well. It was made well because she made it. She made it because it used to be her job. Like everyone of her strain, she had no teeth, only two solid ridges of tough bone, largely blunt and made for gnashing but gradually coalescing into a single triangular point, evolved for ripping flesh. She clacked her jaws together experimentally. Clack. Clack.

Eyes were tired and dry. There was a short mechanical hiss and a snap as she the shields over her eyes retracted back into their sockets in her cheekbones. The only light was from a pair of grates in the ceiling, but the glare nearly blinded her. She snapped the shields back into place, and the heads up display came slowly back into focus.

Originally her skin was the sort of rust color common to her strain. By now it was a deep weather-worn red, except for the parts that were charred black and rotting. Gotta replace that. If she could grow hair, she had done a damn good job of making sure it was thoroughly singed off. It occurred to her that it might be fun to have hair one day. Maybe she could make it herself. Would it grow in spirals? She looked down to open the bag of genebending tools at her waist, and her heart jumped into her goddamn throat.

Staring up at her from the pile of corpses was a pair of bright red eyes on an unnaturally pale face with no nose or lips. Which would not be terribly upsetting or surprising, had it not just said “well met” in an oddly pleasant female voice, attempt to sit up, fail, and then ask politely if its new acquaintance would stop sitting on it.

This is the first chapter of Amber Skies. The complete story can be read here, along with its currently-in-progress sequel, Emerald Seas.

[normal-horoscopes]

First chapter of Amber Skies sequel is here

[deeper-ever-deeper]

Emerald Seas chapter 12 is up now!

Also! I've made a new Sideblog specifically for Amber Skies stuff.

[gentlemean]

I'm currently rereading Amber Skies (@deeper-ever-deeper) by @cryptotheism, and couldn't help but create some fanart! They've been posting these short in-universe radio-shows as extras, and I recreated one of those as audio!

audio recordings, voices, editing by me

script by the Caretaker

read the entire novel on their ao3

[soulinkpoetry]

My mean side is a pitbull raised on survival mode. The other one drips of honey and emerald seas.

@soulinkpoetry

.Darkness and light exists in all of us.

.

[artificial-radiance]

the unnamed pov character [simply referred to by she/her pronouns by everything and everyone] for a story I'm writing inspired by amber skies/emerald seas by cryptotheism aka the caretaker, and based on the classic tale of sleeping beauty

i dont actually like drawing my characters that are exclusive for writing, but I thought it would be fun to have an idea. the most solid details about her are that she has blue eyes that blink like old baby dolls do, she has needles for fingers, and mechanisms make up her entire being.

i plan on posting the story on ao3 under the title "sweet dreams dear needles"

[self-inconsistent]

“ Kip looked up at him, face entirely blank. Maybe it was something about the dying firelight, or the sound of the rain. Maybe it was how Kip's eyes formed huge perfect circles, and how his mouth was a flat line. Marin was struck with the sudden and intense feeling that he had just asked something deeply personal. “

[elinaline]

Unknowable horror: haiiii !! Omg hiiii ｡⁠◕⁠‿⁠◕⁠｡(⁠◕⁠ᴗ⁠◕⁠✿⁠)(⁠✿⁠^⁠‿⁠^⁠)

Poor Marin, having to experience this directly through his central nervous system: how the fuck are you making that sound with my thoughts

[queenethelred]

A reoccurring "argument" between Zerves and Captain Dramakos

No text versions

[terrafey]

“You can give them a boob window” -CT “@cryptotheism”

The Knight from Emerald Seas, the in-progress sequel to Amber Skies!

[cryptotheism]

The world was burgers and nothing ever hurt.

Sleep was a necessary evil. Billy tried to look on the bright side. He could not make burgers in his sleep, but his body needed rest and nutrients to make burgers. If you really thought about it, sleep was just another step in the burger-making process. It was an ingredient for the process. The metal coffin where he slept was just like the meat locker, a transient space through which the burger must pass. If you really thought about it, it was beautiful.

There was a period at the end of the day, after the doors were locked, the grill was cold, the floors swept and mopped and disinfected, where the only light was the neon glow of "CLOSED". It was only a few short steps to the back of house, where the coffin waited. Billy would lay his body down. The hermetic seal would hiss shut, and the pumps would rumble to life, and the air would grow thick and heavy with a chemical fog. Billy knew he needed rest. Billy knew he needed the nutrients that would leech into his body. But in these moments between burgers and sleep, there was a hole in Billy's heart. The morning shift couldn't come fast enough.

[wormrat]

truly wish there was an amber skies/emerald seas subreddit or smth I need to talk about them with people!!!!

[deeper-ever-deeper]

CHAPTER 14 OF EMERALD SEAS IS UP

[softness-and-shattering]

Wait, is Bury You about the ship??

[fippydarkpaw]