RUCKUS | ZERO SUM

Zero Sum is an actual play speculative fantasy and action drama webserial that follows an array of characters as they navigate the oppressive structures of a Dystopian society that subjugates and fears Wrights, people who wield powers that society uses for daily convenience.    Ruckus is 5 professional writers and 2 extremely patient editors.

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The night sky cracked across Port Haven's light-polluted skyline.

Well, technically, this was Pravya’s skyline, Ossa's lost port of trade. Some people still called her that—Pravya. In her prime, historical structures had decorated the skyline, a story of a centuries old culture that, with its ancient roots, gave the native population a foundation for their fables, their practices, their entire lives. Buildings triggered fond stories, memories; temples reminded the people of the old gods that languished in fringe religions and antiquity; marketplaces were clouded with the spices of nostalgia, the smell of a grandmother’s kitchen in a child’s mind.

Now, Amstead had conquered her. Amstead gave her a new name more palatable to their mother tongue: Port Haven. They pushed her people toward the center where her river of anguish ran through her, put those who loved her most in the path of her floodwaters. They built her a new body, a new face where they’d shattered her, replaced her mythology with knives, jagged skyscrapers all sharp edges and mirrors. Glass and iron and marble stood tall and unyielding against a skyline that still, even after sixty years, mourned the bombs that had robbed Pravya’s heart of a million Ossan pulses. And just like them, Kasse Sejan was absolutely fucked.

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Kadenja Toriet, from Zero Sum ♥ Painted by Nen Chang Watercolor, gouache, and graphite ※ Read the Story on Royal Road Join Ruckus on Discord Support us on Patreon Visit our website ♥

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Critical Condition

Drowning.

It always felt like drowning.

Even after ten years, Kadenja Toriet always opened The Altar with water in his lungs. It bubbled and frothed from his mouth with the desperation of breathing, the necessity of obedience under guise of miracle trickery, survival treason.

He used to fight and claw to clear his lungs, to ease the hemorrhage in his thorax that pressed ever inward. The pressure used to crush him, disintegrate the pleura that held his parts in human form. These days, however, he understood he was a vessel. He was simply a book and every sermon was a reading etched into his sleepless body, his somatoform mind.

In his executioner's arena turned theater replete with last resorts and dead ends, he opened his arms to the screams of an audience who only wanted half the story. They rose to greet him, upturned faces a field of red lit masks that shielded the world from their blood hungry mouths, their worship of the greatest cost.

“You are tired,” he lamented for his murderous flock with the weight of his body heavy in his voice. “You are sick. Your doctors can't fix you. They can't find that seed of suffering in your belly, can't fix the decay in your bones. This is your story they tell you. This is how you  live the rest of your life. This is how you die.”

When the pyre exploded into a bonfire center stage and the music pulsed through the ring, Kadenja straightened to his full height, commanded them be comforted by this truth he'd composed, this book he was chained to, this magic he sold.

“I'm here to rewrite your story. So let's make a sacrifice.”

※ Read the Scene on Royal Road Join Ruckus on Discord Support us on Patreon Visit our website ♥