When Gnyphe’s best friend Kat vanishes, she’ll stop at nothing to get her back. But in the vast, lawless Chamberpot district, missing streetlings are rarely found—even by a girl who can teleport through shadows.

As she digs deeper, Gnyphe uncovers a chilling link between Kat’s disappearance and her own fractured past. Worse, the shadowy creature behind her powers starts feeding on the very memories she needs to solve the mystery—like it wants her to forget.

With time running out and her identity slipping through her fingers, Gnyphe must face a harrowing question:

How much of yourself are you willing to lose to find the truth?

Welcome to week four—the final one!—of the pre-release posts for Inner Demon! Last week we learned a little about Little Jonno—read on this week to learn about the strangest member of Gnyphe’s crew, Tactan.

The full book, Inner Demon, releases July 2nd. Click here to skip to the pre-order links!

Character Portrait: Tactan

Hello, humans! Why are you spawning offspring at this time? Is it your wish to perish?

Tactan is from a species of creature called the jhar-voor, which are the hive mind extensions of their true selves, the voor—not that anyone other than another voor would ever be allowed to meet the center of one of these hive minds.

Despite their unnerving appearance, the voor are a pacifistic species. This is because their reproductive cycles are slow, generally only produce a single offspring, and almost exclusively kill the reproducing parent; recognizing that humans will always drastically outnumber them, the voor have gone to great lengths to attempt to befriend humanity, but have had little success beyond keeping most human nations from being explicitly hostile.

Tactan, a naturally inquisitive soul, accidentally fell in with Gnyphe while exploring the city of Chapelport in the hope that someone there would teach it the ways of humans. It quickly discovered that following Gnyphe around was the most educational experience it had in decades, and over time an enduring friendship formed. Following Gnyphe, an outsider, around hasn’t done much to directly strengthen (or even create) ties between human and voor, but Tactan still feels that its time in the Chamberpot has been extremely well-spent.

Besides, other slivers of its mind, in other bodies, are still busy exploring faraway places, so it’s not like Tactan is putting all of its spores in one host, so to speak.

Inner Demon Chapter 5: Proper Focus

In the Chamberpot, “mountainside” was a very literal description: it referred to either of the city district’s sides that touched a Quillback mountain. Both sides had the thickest and widest parts of the Ebon Crown bridges directly above them, and the torchguard only put forth token efforts to keep the torches and lanterns of mountainside Chamberpot alight; as a result, they were often cave-dark, even when other parts of the Chamberpot had some light.

Kraw moved comfortably, padding along with his claws raised so they didn’t click on the cobbled stones. Gnyphe followed swiftly, silently behind. She was used to the dark of the Chamberpot, accustomed to trusting senses other than her eyes to help her navigate—although she still made use of what little her eyes could see when there was even the barest spark of light. And where Gnyphe’s own senses failed her, something about the shifting of the darkness in her stomach helped her to maintain an awareness of her surroundings; however much she hated her darkness, she found some of the abilities that came with it too useful to ignore.

The Chamberpot’s stirring nightlife shivered in response to their passing, cloaked figures stepping back into alleys and open doors slamming shut. Once or twice Gnyphe thought she felt someone following them, but Kraw’s route through twisting alleys quickly lost any pursuers.

Chapelport is like the story of the mad alchemist who turned himself into a devil, Gnyphe thought, remembering an aged book she had stolen, the feel of its dry and crinkling pages in her hands. With the sun, this city is warm and friendly and inviting. Then night comes along with claws and fangs of iron. For parts of the city, the sun never comes.

Inner Demon Pre-Orders

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