Written by Irritated Penguin

Welcome!

Congratulations on finding the main page for How Best to Use a Sword! Posts here are sorted chronologically, so scrolling down from here will show you the most recent posts. If you’re looking for older posts, the best way to get to them is probably to use the two masterpost pages: the chronological one for if you want the whole series in the order it was posted, and the individual ones for each story on its own. The series is designed to read in whatever order you want, and you don’t need to read every story if one or more of them has content that you don’t want to see.

If you like the story and are so inclined I’d really appreciate the occasional vote on topwebfiction.com, which is how most people find this site and a lot of other great serial stories online. And I’d be remiss in self-promoting if I didn’t tell you I have a Patreon for anyone who wants to and can afford to support the story financially. The whole story is entirely free to read and the only bonus content on Patreon is the right to vote in polls to decide which side characters get featured in their own chapters, so you’re not at all missing anything by choosing not to give me your money.

I hope you enjoy your time here! You can find more information about the story in the About and World pages, and I’m always here to answer questions as well!

Written by Irritated Penguin

Cadet, 4

Version Seven had been programmed with the appearance and mannerisms of its current client’s offspring. It was a tripedal, cylindrically-shaped Toag, half the height of its client, and was currently partly absorbed into the client’s exogel as the client’s membranous feelers penetrated Version Seven’s avatar thoroughly.

“Oh, oh,” said Version Seven, to indicate pleasure. “It’s so weird. It feels so weird, Daddy.”

“That’s good, Pengel,” said the client. “That means you’re doing it right. Keep going for Daddy.”

As Version Seven kept undulating its avatar backwards backwards into the client’s gels, it ran a quick database search on the eighty percent of known client species for whom the word “daddy” directly translated, itself a linguistic coincidence of some magnitude, and determined that for ninety-five-point-four-two of those species, the word also carried a common sexual connotation in known literature.

The probability of such a coincidence occurring was less than half a percent and therefore outside of Version Seven’s parameters to bother calculating.

Written by Irritated Penguin

Stowaway, 116

The Omtec Prime was a very round merperson with dark blue colouring and lots of long frills, all fringed with orange and then yellow. Zhe had dark eyes that were set apart in zhier head and a small snout for a nose, and zhier body paint was swirling patterns of yellow.

When zhe spoke, zheir mouth was full of multiple rows of sharp teeth, and Pax was quite certain he saw a venom sac in there as well. Zheir ‘Vyle was accented in a way that suggested it was not zheir first language, but it wasn’t hard to decipher.

“I’m so grateful to finally meet you,” Zhe said, clapping zhier hands together. “The Emvel Prime’s messages about the mysterious sky people were so fascinating. You must be Captain Natalie.”

Written by Irritated Penguin

Chosen One, 123

Isaac stretched as he went out into the hall, glad to have slept in his own bed. He’d only been gone one night, but it had been a long one. “You want to come see the brothers with me?” he asked Peter, who was with him.

“Sure, if you don’t think they’d hate that.”

Isaac shrugged, and tied the front of his shirt haphazardly, which was good enough. “If they do, they’ll tell us, I’m sure.” Benji probably would, at least. “They probably won’t hate us being there more than they hate being locked up here.”

“I thought it was for their protection,” Peter said.

“Yeah, well, it was for my own protection too when I came here and it took me a long time to see the difference. Speaking of which, hold on a second.”

Written by Irritated Penguin

Team, 114

Cal felt bad just kind of living in the weird time base without doing anything to contribute to the time war effort, so he was doing dishes after a meal while Ray told him everything he’d learned about Royal Valley by being here.

“And they have automata that can scan people’s faces so that it’s hard for criminals to get around, which is actually a huge violation of privacy if you think about it,” Ray was saying, handing Cal dirty dishes one at a time. “Which is why I’m not allowed to go out and look at stuff, just in case my face is in the face library. But Barret said he could get me a fake face that would let me go out and would I be allowed to go out and investigate if he did, Cal? They have huge tunnels under the city for giant machines called trains to move people around all over the place!”

They’d had those on Earth too, so that made sense. “As long as the fake face comes off when you’re done with it,” Cal said. “And you don’t go alone. I know you’re a great explorer but I really don’t want you wandering around by yourself in the totalitarian time city.”

Written by Irritated Penguin

Witch, 119

“Is it okay for us to do this?”

“Of course.”

“I mean that I know there’s more important stuff going on, so…”

“We’re okay. I told you we would do it and we will.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want you focusing on me when the world’s ending.”

“I think if the world’s ending, we should focus on the people we care about,” Ron told Jed, who blinked and looked away just for a second. “Besides, the world’s not ending, and we wouldn’t be out here if I didn’t think we had time for it. And this is important too. Dicks getting hard when they’re not supposed to is a horrible thing.”

Written by Irritated Penguin

Dragon, 124

“H-hey, Owen?”

Owen looked over at Greg, who hadn’t started dressing yet even though they’d both gotten out of the bath. “Yeah?” All five of them had been together, but Gavin had already left to go do his hair in a room that wasn’t too steamy, and Twig was still wrestling with Grey Rain in the bath, which hadn’t yet turned into sex, so they’d probably be a while.

Greg swallowed, looking a bit nervous. “I was wondering,” he said, in a quiet but calm voice. “If you could teach me how to shave?”