Story to focus on poll! (Patreon)

So, obviously some stories are missing from this list, and that is because I don't think my muse is interested in them right now. And obv Ryn isn't there cos I'm feeling a little burnt out on that story.

Oh, and here's a snippet from Iron Drumbeat, the Mech based, cyberpunk-steampunk-long-past-the-apocalypse story.

I struggled to keep my mask on while we rushed through the streets of Cascarton, coppers hot on our heels. Fuckin’ grease stains were out “recruiting” again, which was their way of saying they were gonna throw us all into the factories, or worse, out onto the front lines.

For as long as I could remember—which wasn’t that long according to Long Stake, the boss of our crew—the Empire of Cascar’d been fighting the Sydscara Kingdoms. Why they were fighting, I didn’t have the foggiest fucking clue, and I didn’t give a shit ‘neither. What did it matter to us street rats what the nobility said the war was for? We were fightin’ our own damn war against our bellies down here.

“Oi, Skitters!” Stake called, looking back at me. “Get your scrawny little ass in gear, mate! If you ain’t right behind us when we gets to the dip, I’m lockin’ you out.”

I scowled ahead at the older boy’s back, which was already turned so he could keep using is stupid long legs to run faster than me. His shaggy brown hair was messed up even more by the mask strap around his head, and I imagined running up behind him and yanking on some of the tufts.

Not only was his stride longer than mine, but his mask was better too. He didn’t have to keep holding it to his face so he wouldn’t inhale some of the Sludgeworks fumes. Gods, if they caught me, I’d rather die than work down here.

A crack from behind scattered my thoughts out of my head as surely as if it’d been a proper gun the coppers fired. Instead, I ducked and a bolo whirred over my head to catch around one of the thousands of metal pipes that carried terrifyingly toxic chemicals from one chemshop floor to the next.

Metal pipes stained black with soot and corrosion were everywhere down here. They wormed their way over the stone bricks of the chemshops and factories that made up the Cascarton Industrial District. That was the official name, obviously, which nobody used ‘cos they didn’t want to sound like an asshole from one of the upper districts of the city. Not that I really knew what one of those neon-lit fancies sounded like. They didn’t come down to the old city, not for generations, not since the ‘unner city was just the city and the mistveils were the edge of the world.