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  1. Public Bookmark 22

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    “I wanted to see how you’re doing. I know this—being here wasn’t your first choice.”

    “No,” says Daniil. It’s hardly an admission. “But few of us have had our first choice these days, have we? In adversis, necesse est accommodare.” Never mind that he’s not adapting especially well at all, that Artemy has seen the proof for himself. “If you’re feeling responsible for me, I’d rather you save it for someone better suited for your protection.”

    At that, Artemy looks up, and straight into Daniil’s eyes.

    This close, in the light of the gas lamps, they are an unfathomable color and depth: light and simultaneously shadowed, somewhere between blue and green and gray, like staring into a clear lake that stretches deeper than the eye can make out. Daniil stares into those depths and finds himself straining forward, leaning, as if he could tip into that body of water and lose himself beneath the surface.

    “No,” Artemy says at last, his voice low enough to stoke that heat in Daniil’s gut again. “I invited you here because I think you’re the only person in town I’m not responsible for."

    Language:
    English
    Words:
    23,212
    Chapters:
    1/1
    Comments:
    36
    Kudos:
    98
    Bookmarks:
    22
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    18 Apr 2026

  2. Public Bookmark 5

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    “You don’t look like they’ve been mistreating you too grievously, at least,” the strange woman said. “Aside from the obvious.”

    There was something of the university, too, in how she said it, airy and self-satisfied, with a capital accent even stronger than the sooty smell that clung to her coat. A new arrival in the town, yet she stood there as if she owned the jail and talked almost as if Artemis should have known her on sight.

    “Who are you?” Artemis asked. Her thoughts, time, still didn’t seem to be moving much quicker than the trickle of water down the wall, cold and puddling. With someone like that standing in its doorway, the cell could almost have been a dream after all.

    “Dana Dankovskaya, Bachelor of Medicine,” she introduced herself, with a little tug of the lips that said she liked doing it. Liked flaunting the title, maybe – a university woman after all, and what was someone like that doing in a little town on the edge of the steppe? “And apparently the most competent criminal investigator in this town. I was able to convince Governor Saburov that the timing of your arrival makes it absolutely impossible for you to have killed your father.”

    Language:
    English
    Words:
    17,427
    Chapters:
    1/1
    Collections:
    1
    Comments:
    17
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    43
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    5
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    357

    14 Apr 2026

  3. Public Bookmark 8

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    Dankovsky seizes the most unexpected opportunities, turns phrases at exactly the right time to move circumstances into his preferred alignment. He produces solutions for problems he could not possibly have anticipated before they arrived. Today, his foresight has saved the life of a man he has made no secret of loathing, and Karminsky cannot yet pin a reasonable motive to that mercy. Dankovsky acts through his days with such frightening precision; such unerring exactness in the midst of his wild moods. It is dazzling to watch. Captivating. 

    Impossible.

    And Karminsky is an expert hunter of impossible things.

    ---

    In which the Inquisitor attempts to add an impossible object to his collection with unanticipated results.

    Language:
    English
    Words:
    8,219
    Chapters:
    1/1
    Comments:
    26
    Kudos:
    44
    Bookmarks:
    8
    Hits:
    405

    31 Mar 2026

  4. Public Bookmark 15

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    Daniil tries to return back to the Capital after the events of Pathologic. He soon finds that it's not as simple as leaving.

    Language:
    English
    Words:
    16,317
    Chapters:
    1/1
    Comments:
    14
    Kudos:
    92
    Bookmarks:
    15
    Hits:
    970

    15 Feb 2026

  5. Public Bookmark 61

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    And when all is said and done, when there’s no more blood to wash your hands of, who do you still need to look in the eye? Who will look at you?
    When you’ve taken the flame of magic and put it out with your own fingers, whose home can you walk into, head tall?
    Diurnal ending (a choice of love, like any other) and what’s in the silence that follows.

    (added informative notes at the beginning about the deeply self-indulging nature of this work where i ask you to pretend i’m simply picking up where i’ve left off.)

    Language:
    English
    Words:
    24,890
    Chapters:
    4/4
    Comments:
    60
    Kudos:
    310
    Bookmarks:
    61
    Hits:
    6,768

    30 Jan 2026