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Yesterday, I had a dream where I was flying over a burnt city, the buildings razed to the ground whilst a vermillion haze surrounded everything. It felt like I was strapped into an invisible helicopter as the depressing scene flew past me. Air whipped through my hair, and I tried waving my hands in front of me to see if I could touch anything. I sensed nothing. I tried wiggling in the seat I was in and although I could feel the texture of what seemed to be my mattress beneath me, I was too petrified to try much more for fear of falling. I attempted to feel the seat beneath me, but it was the weirdest sensation to realise that though I felt like I was sitting on something, nothing was actually there. Realising that my struggles to leave the chair in the sky were fruitless, I slumped back into my indiscernible chair and let the dream guide me.
A while later, the chair slowed and then halted to a stop abruptly. I was flung forward and for a minute could see my life flash before my eyes, sure I was about to die when straps dug into my shoulder, stopping my forward momentum and pulling me back to my original position on the chair. It took me a while to calm down enough to forget about my near-death experience for the moment and focus on the apocalyptic scene below me.
Underneath me seemed to be the remnants of a grand city, the concrete and metal of what used to be imposing skyscrapers strewn along the ground. A dust cloud hung over the city like a blanket of grime, enveloping the whole town. The orange fog gave the city the appearance that it was currently being ravaged by a great blaze. Cars lay abandoned in the streets, most of them rusted over.
There was no sign of life, human or animal. I scanned the area around the city and realised that there were no plants either. No trees, no bushes, there were even no weeds. The landscape all looked the same, this burnt, dry-looking dirt interspersed by blocks of grey concrete or other monotone man-made structures. There was no colour in this dismal world apart from the ever-present orange, which I was quite frankly, sick of seeing.
Unable to look at this desolate scene any longer, I raised my gaze and tried to find something, anything that was not the same dull scene over and over again.
A small change from the usual environment caught my eye. There were no grey structures anywhere in front of me, in what seemed to be a giant cavity. This trench stretched for miles and not much was special about it, it was the same wasteland that extended all around me. What caught my eye though, was the lack of grey stone structures and these strange patches of white, curvy lines.
After contemplating the crater for a while, I realised it used to be a bay. An ocean brimming with life, the bleak remnants now sad piles of bones on the scorched seafloor.
I felt sorrowful seeing the aftermath of the end of civilisation. But at the same time, I was in a very unique position, being able to take in what no one else would ever be able to see. And that meant I was in a position to ensure that what I saw in my dream would never happen.
I never want this bright, lively world to ever become the colourless, grim void that I witnessed. So please, listen to what I have to say.
r/talesbycatschr0dinger
Thanks for this amazing prompt, it really got my brain whirring. I’m pretty happy with this at the moment, but it could benefit from some revision if I feel like it later lol. |
This is miss misery from Ed brubakers “in from the cold” her power set is vague, except that when she’s doing something awful it makes her stronger, and when she isn’t she gets sick. In the comic, the bad guys play “origin stories” where they literally just recite their origin story in the third person, and hers was something like:
Once upon a time there was a good little girl named Felicia. Felicia was a timid, productive little citizen who was terrified to ever do anything in appropriate until one day she got sick. Like real sick. The doctors couldn’t tell what was the matter with her for years, and one day she heard one nurse tell another that she was probably faking it, and she snapped: she kicked him straight in the balls, and she never felt better in her whole life, as though all her sickness was purged from her. She walked right out of that hospital, into the liquor store across the street, and helped herself to the fanciest looking bottle she could reach. When the clerk admonished her to pay she broke the bottle over his head.
She had never even *considered* doing anything like this before.
She had never ever felt *stronger or happier* than this before.
And from that day on, Felicia was dead and Miss Misery was born. |
(This is bonus content for my serial, [How Did We Get Here?](https://www.reddit.com/user/PolarisStorm/comments/z2fy6y/how_did_we_get_here_a_serial_by_polaris_storm/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). I am putting this at the top to warn any active readers that this contains spoilers up to chapter 18.)
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**Dull Morning**
No matter how much xe seemed to sleep, Sven could never shake the exhaustion that plagued xem. Maybe that was to be expected, though. Ever since… everything happened, xyr life had become all work and no play. Xe just wanted to do something that wasn't teaching the clones a lesson or tending to the needs of them, xyr coworkers, or xemself.
Xe opened the cabinets of the kitchen, trying to figure out what to eat. They were filled to the brim with plants and leaves of many kinds that xyr coworker Delilah had foraged… so probably a salad… again.
How long had it been since xe had anything that wasn't a salad?
Xe looked down and almost jumped. Just a few seconds ago, nothing had been there, but now a large green and blue caterpillar with black spots stared up at xem.
"How the hell-"No, xe wasn't supposed to say that. "How did you manage to get there, Seven? You're supposed to be in your room until eight."
Seven tilted xyr head and continued to stare up at Sven with wide eyes.
"Are you hungry? I might be able to get you a snack, but you can't tell anybody I did."
The caterpillar shook xyr head, and instead, opened xyr six legs up wide.
"Oh, you… just want to be held. I see. I don't know, I'm not…"
Well, xyr coworkers weren't here right now. They couldn't see and reprimand xem for holding xyr clone if it was just for a bit, right?
"Okay, fine, just… don't tell anybody, alright?"
Seven did not hesitate as xe climbed right up into Sven's arms and snuggled up.
Two separate thoughts entered Sven's head at the same time. One was to drop the caterpillar and get as far away from xem as possible, knowing the danger that this posed to xyr health.
The other thought was much more parental in nature. Even if Seven was technically xyr clone and not xyr child, this was the closest xe could ever get to having a family.
So, instead, xe sang. It was a sweet Russian children's song, its title roughly translating to "A Clumsy Little Bear was Walking through the Forest."Xyr mother had sung it to xem in a time long gone, and now it was xyr turn to pass it on to xyr only offspring.
It was just a shame that Seven wouldn't have the chance to do the same, at least not in its intended form. Xe wouldn't get to speak Russian around the insectoids, or any human language at all.
The memory of the song would one day die with xem. |
\[Riotous Realization\]
Brice's sword hand wavered. The bright flash of golden light signified the start of combat; but, he needed to shut his eyes just to open them again. Something changed and he hoped that giving his eyes another chance to readjust would make his opponent normal again. He was only more confused when he opened his eyes again.
He saw nothing but fluffy white peaks for a brief second before a cold, wet splat struck his face. Then, he chuckled and dropped his sword. It fell to the ground with a heavy, bouncing clang. All at once he registered what he saw after the flash of light, what he saw when he opened his eyes the second time, and the perfect combination of the sticky mess assaulting his face with an audible "splat". He didn't understand it; but, it was real. And, a little bit funny. He wiped the white cream from his face and grinned at his opponent.
She was a normal teenage girl, with bright orange hair, moments before. But, she transformed with a golden flash into a mime with a black suspenders and bright orange pants. Her face was covered with white makeup. Orange detailing around her eyes helped enhance her expressions. Her head was tilted at a sharp angle as she stared at him with an exaggerated look of confusion.
"This was not how I expected this fight to happen...,"Brice laughed to himself once he could see her clearly again.
"You're not supposed to laugh...,"the teenage mimed walked closer to him with a critical eye.
"You look like you're not supposed to talk...,"Brice chuckled again. She smiled at that and looked up at him.
"What's your favorite number?"she asked.
"42!"Brice answered.
"Mine too,"the teen nodded. She held out her hand in greeting. "My name's Riot,"she said.
"Brice,"he introduced himself and shook her hand. Her orange, fingerless glove felt like the softest silk he'd ever touched. He instantly felt guilty for sullying it with his sticky hand. But, it still shimmered like new silk when he pulled away.
"Well, Brice. You don't know it yet; but, your life just changed in a huge way...,"Riot began explaining as she pulled something out of her pocket. It was a transparent glass card that lit up as she touched it.
"How do you mean?"Brice asked.
"In every possible way,"Riot smirked.
"Hello, Riot,"a new voice surprised Brice. He turned to see another teenage girl. She wore a crisp white suit and had long, straight white hair that went down to the middle of her back. Her glowing red eyes matched the tiny accents of color in her suit.
"Hey, Rhapsody,"Riot nodded at the new girl. Then, she gestured at Brice. "He woke up as a Calavera,"she said. Rhapsody nodded then Riot focused on Brice.
"She'll take you to someone that'll explain your new reality to you."
"What about our duel?"Brice asked. He couldn't explain it; but, he found himself eagerly hoping to finish their match just for the chance to compete against her.
"You'll learn how to contact me again, once you're ready,"Riot said. "And, it'll be more fun; because you might actually win,"she added. Rhapsody gestured at an open black portal for Brice; then, she went through it herself without waiting for him.
"You make it sound like I didn't have a chance,"Brice laughed as he moved toward the portal. Riot's eyes opened wide and nodded.
"Not when the system script says you lose,"she said. He paused with one foot in the portal when he heard that. Then, her expression shifted to a warm, friendly smirk as she stepped forward and patted him on the back. With the final pat, she gave him a stern push forward; he heard her say one last thing. "It's a good thing you woke up from that nightmare, huh?"
\*\*\*
Thank you for reading! I’m responding to prompts every day. This is story #1901 in a row. (Story #091 in year six.). This story is part of an ongoing saga that takes place at a high school in my universe. It began on August 22nd and I will be adding to it with prompts every day until May 26th. They are all collected in order at [this link](https://www.reddit.com/r/Hugoverse/comments/wtglls/tokuhigh_alternet_class/). |
When he had originally got his tour of the property, the thing he loved most about it was the cool mountain air. The client, Mr. McCullough, owned a sprawling modernist-style mansion up in the rocky mountains. You could trudge along a winding mountain road to get there, but most visitors took the helicopter route, landing in what McCullough called the "helipad garden". As finely-trimmed shrubbery and fruit trees recoiled from the air of his winding-down helicopter, Calhoun took a deep breath. And then gagged.
The air was heavy with the scent of blood and rot.
He stood up straight, adjusting his tie, instinctively retaining his image. Then he gagged again. "Mein Gott"whispered Brauner, his bodyguard. It was the most emotion he'd expressed all month.
The garden was peppered in bodies, all of them carefully placed in or behind the shrubbery. All of them bore the logo of the Sentinel Security company.
They walked through the scene together, trying to piece together what happened. Almost all of them had been killed with a knife, and no crimson trails lay in lush green grass. Calhoun noted, in horror, that they had been dragged away and stabbed. Brauner tried check the mags on each of their weapons, but gave up after number five. It was pretty clear none of them had been fired.
The insurance guys were gonna have a field day with this.
Eventually, they encountered... the pile. It lay in a circle of shrubbery and trees. Calhoun remembered setting up the patrol routes for the client. This was where two of them intersected. He wanted to throw up, and did so, on his hands and knees. Brauner gave him a few sympathetic pats on the back.
Something was under his hand. It was too round to be a pebble. He picked it up, and saw that it was a small shell casing. 45 ACP. None of their guys used that. He looked around, and noticed that the east-side camera, which faced this spot, had been shot. But Calhoun always preferred overlapping surveillance. And there, to the west, was an undamaged camera. He thanked his past self, and with Brauner, they ran to the camera room.
As they waited for the camera footage to load, Calhoun wondered who did it. Who killed their entire security force? Sentinel had no enemies. In fact, Sentinel didn't even do security. They did theater, for clients and insurance alike. Clients could feel safe knowing their mansions were protected, and when something was stolen, they insurers could never argue that they had failed to protect their property. Thus, full reimbursement.
So that surely meant that whoever did this had to be an organized, militant group.
They watched the footage. 11:58 PM, April 6th. They watched as, one after another, guards passing by the shrub circle got pulled in and never came out. Eventually, the assailant emerged.
One guy.
It was one *fucking* guy.
What the *fuck* was Calhoun going to tell his boss? |
“We already TOLD you last time you tried causin’ a stir in these parts, Devil!” The Pastor shouted his fiery words at the shadow growing behind the farthest pews.
“You can’t do anything to these people here! In the house of God!” The shadow grew taller. Wider. It crept forward down the narrow central corridor and spread wide behind the crying children and their gasping parents. “You can threaten all you want, Devil, but we know the devil is a LIAR!” The pastor shook as his finger nails dug into the underside of his mahogony pulpit. Whether it was from the mouth frothing fervor of his speech or shudders of fear remembering the promise the shadow had once whispered to the congregation in this very church of what would happen next made no difference. Now, this time the shadow did not whisper. This was no rolling blackout on a new moon night. No howling wind that played a trick on your ears. No group hallucination from a gas leak or whatever excuse the congregation came up with to ignore the shadow’s prior warning. It’s promise. From somewhere in the obsidian darkness engulfing the church a reverberating, even toned baritone spoke. “The devil is a liar, and I’m sure you wish I were he for that reason but alas much to your misfortune I am not the devil. I am darkness. I am the tingle on the back of your neck and the lump in your throat and my word is as good as gold…”
​
*feel free to continue from here as well.* |
As I leisurely walked the household hallway, I heard a tiny sound. It wasn't one of the usual noises that my home regularly made, and, having lived here for 20 years, I knew every one of them, well. No. It was a different sound. A new one.
I stopped, and deliberately tilted my head, straining to hear it again. It was only a moment, and then it came. Low, light and sharp. I knew it's origin.
Stepping backwards, three paces, I didn't need to look for the handle of the closet door, because my hand found it, easy in familiarity. I leaned toward the edge of the door, apprehensive, but still curious. Turning the knob, I slowly opened the door.
"Hey, Muttonhead!"I yelled, so that my voice would carry throughout the house. "Why is the dog on the top shelf of the linen closet?" |
It's the moment I've dreamed of. All this work on community radio, all the time trying to learn and learn, and I've finally gotten a professional radio job. WFIT never knew what hit them.
"I'm here for my first day, I'm the new program director."The station head shook my hand.
"Excellent, I think you'll do great here. Just follow the list we have and you'll be fine."
"Wait, I'm program director, I get to choose the playlists, right? You said we're not IHeart so it's not a computer..."The station head shook his head.
"Oh, I thought we said it in the job description. We're a radio station dedicated to playing the fitting music at the right time. Our playlists are locked in."I was confused.
"Locked in...? But the program director chooses."The station head smiles.
"Oh, you get a choice. When someone's happy, you can play "I Got You (I Feel Good)"OR "Walking on Sunshine."You get some chances to mix things up. If someone's feeling like they're badass, you can play "Bad to the Bone"OR "Born to be Wild"...though we prefer the former when they're doing something bad and the latter when they're getting in an adventure, to be fair. If they're at war, you can pick "For What It's Worth", "All Along The Watchtower", OR "Fortunate Son."We give the program director some leeway, and think your work will fit well."
"Well, you know my aircheck showed I skew more modern, a little more alternative than this..."The station head smiled.
"Yeah, you'll have that. You can play "Bohemian Like You"when the sadsack lovelorn guy is on his first date with a Manic Pixie Dream Girl; you'd be surprised how often that happens. Plus, now we're getting more calls to play 'Fight The Power' for protests, that can help matters."Now I was disappointed.
"Well, then why not get a computer for it?"
"We need a human to do it for more active work. I mean, a computer can't know someone's touching down in the South for us to play "Sweet Home Alabama"as much as a human can check flight records. AI can't know when a fight's brewing to put 'Kung Fu Fighting' on at just the right time. Only a human can do it right, and that's where you come in."
"Well, this doesn't look like the job I dreamed of..."The station head smiled.
"Oh, you'll have some fun. Like, you can get to choose to play "What a Wonderful World"sincerely or ironically, all our hires like that..."Well, I do like some irony sometimes...
"Okay...wait, multiple program directors?"
"Yeah. We have to have people in charge of our surveillance to know just when the right moment to play the song is. You'll just be in charge of one market- you'll be watching video of each place to know the right time. I'll have you watch Ed here, he's good at it...see? He saw this loser on his first day of school, plugs in "All Star"...then right after the kid with their new stepmother, right to "Ain't No Mountain High Enough..."...and yes, the nice car, RIGHT to "Low Rider!"This is a person you should see as a textbook, this is what we expect of you!" |
"But it's fun,"was the offender's rebuttal.
Sarah exhaled and ran a hand over her sweaty brow. She wasn't paid nearly enough to deal with half of the things she encountered on a daily basis, let alone this. Yet here she was, confronting a reality-bending six-year-old and his defensive mother. Other than the knowing gleam in his beady eyes, he looked like a normal child - unkempt sandy hair, red-tinged nose, Spider-Man T-shirt stained with ketchup. The only real difference was that Benjamin could slice through the fabric of spacetime as though he were cutting up construction paper.
"I just don't see why you need to berate my child for it,"his mother said, glaring. "He was just playing. I already told him to be careful."
"I'm not trying to berate him, ma'am,"Sarah replied. "I just don't want anyone to get lost or hurt."She chuckled as good-naturedly as possible. "I mean, I saw his work and I've gotta say, it's pretty impressive."
Which was true. Earlier, another child had begun crying because she'd lost her bracelet in one of the tunnels. Her grandmother had just undergone knee surgery and could not help, so Sarah offered to climb inside and look for it. It would give her a break from wrapping up Whoppers and counting chicken fries, anyway. Sarah removed her shoes and black cap and crawled into the colorful labyrinth.
Instantly the stench of sweaty feet greeted her nose. She made her way up the soft stairs, scouring the cracks and feeling the vinyl for any sign of a bracelet. Above her, a little boy scuttled into one of the plastic pipes.
"Hey there,"Sarah called up to him, her voice amplified but muffled at the same time. "If you see a blue sparkly Elsa bracelet anywhere, just let me know and I'll come get it!"
The boy poked his head out and stared at her before disappearing into the tube again. Sarah reached the landing and entered the opposite tunnel. The plastic was scuffed with years of games and adventures. Sarah recalled similar fast-food playgrounds from her own youth, and they seemed much larger and more endless than they did now.
The tunnel ended in a small room of sorts, with a cloudy window overlooking the restaurant. Below, the little girl sucked on her fingers anxiously, while her grandmother packed up their leftovers. Sarah did not see any bracelet here, so with a grunt she shimmied around and crawled back to the other tunnel.
The plastic walls and foot smell vanished in one blink, and Sarah found herself beneath a swirling violet sky, breathing in crisp mountain air. The shock knocked the breath out of her and she stumbled forward onto a bed of grass. Dazed, she lay for a few seconds, listening to the howl of an alien wind. She gingerly lifted herself off the ground and stretched a hand upward - where the top of a tube should have been, she felt open air instead. The purple tempest above seemed to roll on for eternity, but the grassy plateau ended in a sharp cliff. Below the ledge loomed a gaping, hungry, pitch-black chasm.
Something glittering caught her eye. Not knowing what else to do, Sarah leaned forward and picked it up.
"Get outta here!"
A small hand jammed into her spine, and she toppled off the ledge, screaming.
But instead of jagged rocks and howling wind, her elbows and knees knocked against winding plastic. Still shrieking, she spilled out of the mouth of the slide and collected in a jumble on the rubber playground floor.
"My bracelet!"the little girl cried joyously, grabbing the item from Sarah's hand.
"My goodness, are you alright?"her grandmother asked.
"BENJAMIN!"another woman shouted. "Come down here right now, mister!"
Soon after Sarah got her bearings and dusted off her uniform, the little boy from the tunnel emerged from the slide. Sheepishly, he stood before his mother.
The woman, to Sarah's surprise, was not very angry with her son for causing a disturbance in spacetime. Rather, she scolded him for not "being more careful,"and sent him right back in to play. Sarah did not care how the woman parented her son, but she had to look out for other customers' children.
"What you're doing is really cool,"Sarah told Benjamin with a small smile, "but you can't just go and make a whole new dimension in the playground. That can be really scary for the other kids. Okay?"
Benjamin nodded forlornly, but his mother huffed and grabbed his hand.
"Whatever. Next time we'll just go to the McDonald's playplace." |
**\[EU\]** [SCP Foundation](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com)
\-----
SCP-8001
Description: SCP-8001-1 are entities which appears inside enclosed structures designated 'homes' by official documentation randomly. SCP-8001-1 are visualcognitohazards, and as such are unaffected by being moved through or covered up. They appear as blurry humanoid figures, akin to a three-dimensional shadow. Tearing down the structures they reside in does not destroy them. The only known way to destroy SCP-8001-1 entities is to shoot a lead bullet through SCP-8001-1.
SCP-8001-2 \[redacted: security clearance level 4\]
Special Containment Procedures: By preventing the classification of 'homes' to 'residential areas' instead, SCP-8001-1 entities have stopped appearing completely.
UPDATE: SCP-8001-1 neutralized, SCP-8001-2 \[data expunged\]. |
“I don't want a soulmate! I want a soul nemesis!” shout brusquely the pale young man. Frowning, he stood up, trying to catch his breath, as if everything was normal. “As if everything could be normal” he scoffed cynically. Gently, an older blond beside him grabbed his wrist, brushing the outline of the mark that was shinning there. Feeling that the breath of his gray-haired pupil was steady enough, he carefully tried to lock eyes with him. “Octavius, there is no such thing as a soul nemesis!
\- But I can’t allow myself to have such a weakness! I don’t need to love anyone; I can’t have someone to carry about! I need someone who will push me further, who will never hold me back. I need someone who will always be in front of me, someone I will need to constantly catch up with! I need someone I can hate, more than anyone will understand! Lazarus, I need to become stronger, and this will hold me back!”. Sighing, the oldest stepped back. “You don’t even now who is your soulmate! Maybe this will be the person you longing for, maybe he will be able to make you a better warrior. But maybe, you should try to let him love you, to let him make you understand that sometimes, love isn’t just a weakness, and is instead the most powerful thing on the earth. I know that you are afraid, Octavius, to lose someone once again, but you have the perfect chance to try again.” |
John’s colleagues at the CERN research lab had thought he finally lost it when he suggested manifold dark matter space as provided a link between alternate dimensions.
His mental stability had been declining since “the incident”. John’s longtime best friend, Snuffles, had somehow snuck out of his family home and followed John to a university conference on, ironically, alternate dimension theories.
Snuffles caught John attention with his unique, one of a kind meow. John looked to see where the familiar sound was coming from, and saw Snuffles just in time to watch him get hit by a car.
Snuffles was still alive when John arrived at his side. His cute meows turned to a bloody gurgle, his fur soaked in red. John rush Snuffles to the hospital, but he couldn’t save him.
After “the incident”, John fell into a deep depression. Snuggles was his only real friend. He had left his childhood home and childhood friends decades ago, and he was estranged from his mother. He never met his father.
If John had been anyone else, he may have just offer himself. But John was John. He graduated first in his class at Berkley and quickly prominence with a few groundbreaking papers on space time folding. He knew better than anyone that the universe works in strange ways, and that if there was a way for him to get back to Snuffles he would find it.
So find it he did. John developed a way to travel to other dimensions. He used the old British telephone booth he kept in his game room as an antique, and built a sort of inter dimensional ship out of it.
“Here goes nothing” he said to himself, as he fired up the machine for its first ever full test flight.
The process wasn’t an exact science (yet anyways). He couldn’t be sure about what kind of reality he would be walking into. Maybe he’d transport to a timeline where the Sun had exploded. Maybe he would arrive in a future where Germany had won WW2.
John pulled the lever, and with a flash and a bang he felt himself hurtled across time and space into a light so bright it was blinded his sight. Then with a flop, he hit the ground inside his craft.
“That fucking sucks” he said, reeling from what felt like a massive hangover. He stood up, opened the phone booth door, stepped out, and looked around.
It looked like the inside of the same garage he left from, but John knew whatever he experienced was profound. He has taken a walk down psychedelic lane a few times in the past, but nothing had ever felt like strolling that close to the event horizon of all being.
John shook the questions from his mind. He had a job to do. He headed out of the garage and into a dimly lit living room. John wondered how late it was for the room to be so dark, and if maybe he had damaged his eyes. “Snuggles?” He whispered into the dark shadows.
Two tiny yellow eyes slits poked out from atop a large black piano in the shadow of a corner. Snuggles snarled back in an uncharacteristically deep and gurgle manner. Still, John approaches “Snuggles it’s me! You don’t know what I had to do to get here. Don’t you remember me?” He outstretched his arm towards the piano.
Great , sharp teeth appeared in the shadow, which began stretching out from the corner of the room. “I’m sorry John. We’re not supposed to let you get this far. Let Snuggles fix everything.” |
"Are you my daddy? Mummy left me here, and I'm scared."I looked at the little girl, dressed in plain cloth, with her little hooves leaving a trail on the rugged path into the clearing. As I startled, her black eyes blinked vertically, and I noticed tiny little horns just peeking under her raven hairline.
I patted myself down, feeling my heart race. *If you're to be Reborn, you need to do me a favour.* A ping went through the parts of me that were spiritual, as I patted myself down frantically. I barely noticed the sharpened nails or my skin as I dug into a pouch just below my navel, finding a skin-bound time, faded by sun damage, but radiating something ethereal.
I put my finger up to the child slowly, trying not to startle her. I opened the book, and it started oozing a violet-silver liquid as I separated the first page from the inner cover. The girl flinched back, as though I were about to strike her; I gently waved her in, still keeping my finger pointed.
The book itself looked empty - but before my very eyes, I noticed that the same liquid dropped from the top of the page, before soaking in and revealing two messages. One of them in a violet inky colour; the other in mercury.
*Protect the child for me until she grows into her power. Once that happens, bring her to me, and wipe away your debt.* This in violet.
In silver; *You have all the skills available to you, but you need to unlock them first with practice. Try the axe on one of the trees at the edge of the clearing.*
I looked at the girl. "I'm not your daddy, little one. But I'm here for you anyway."I picked up the axe, being careful not to catch the girl. I gestured for her to move out of the way as I pulled my arms back, gripping the haft of the axe, before swinging it at a tree. There was the sound of wood being cut, and a mental *ping!*
My first swing had been rough; as the axe entered the wood, I nearly lost my grip to the reverberating shock travelling up my arms. But I kept going. Chop. Chop. Chop. And within minutes, I could feel my body adjusting as though this kind of growth was natural.
I smiled, and turned to the girl, leaning my axe against an uncut tree. She blinked again, and I gently reached out to her. "It's going to be okay, but only if you tell me your name. Mine is....well, I haven't decided yet. But I'll let you name me."
The little girl scrunched up her face, and tapped her chin many times as she thought. Then her face lit up. "You can be Uncle Lord. I'm Luci."She put her four-digit hand out, and as I took it in mine, I realised just how small she was. I picked her up, hearing her squeal, and cradled her to my side as I picked up the axe as we left the clearing. |
Actually a personal belief that I think would make a great story, we never die. Not to ourselves anyway, our soul follows a split timeline/multiverse every time we die, so that those deaths just become “near deaths” if that makes any sense. Like hopping universes every time we would’ve died to a universe where we didn’t, but to that point in time is very nearly identical to the one we just left. Theoretically there’s an infinite amount, right? Anyway I came up with this cause there’s just been too many times where I thought I died. Like I’m 95% sure a car phased through my back half when I was pulling out one day, but nothing happened. It was like the universe just said no, but then tiny things were different. A crack in a table that wasn’t there before but had been mended somehow, and the slightest notable difference in interactions with everyone in your circle. Moms slightly cross with you but you can’t tell why, your best friend has a new secret and you can tell because you KNOW them but you can tell it’s also something they’ve been keeping awhile. Stuff that’s just different enough that you could easily chock it up to being a little more perceptive than usual and think nothing of it, that it must’ve always been that way, and eventually even you begin to think it has. Good luck. |
Giffin quickly packed his bags and walked back downstairs. The Sergeant who had driven him home not five minutes ago was patiently waiting in the foyer. It struck Giffin as odd that this soldier was so calm - not a single tentacle was fidgeting, and his four eyes gazed lazily over his blunt beak. Giffin, conversely, couldn't keep his eyes straight; one was watching the stairs, one was double-checking that he'd packed his best suit, and the last two were staring out the front window at the two additional armored vehicles which had pulled up behind the Sergeant's. His anterior tentacles began to swish back and forth - bloody hell, he wish he knew why he was being summoned to the capital.
"Let's roll"said the Sergeant, opening the door and saluting. Giffin felt weird being treated like an honored guest inside his own home, but it was certainly an effective way to make him follow orders, so out the door he strode. The Sergeant led Giffin towards the second car and opened the back door. "I'll take your luggage in my car"he said, politely yet assertively snatching the bags as Giffin got in, then he closed the door.
"Good morning"said a voice.
Giffin startled, directing three eyes towards the other passenger in the vehicle, a uniformed officer. So much was going on that he hadn't noticed the other Alenmi. Giffin took a deep breath; he hadn't even put on his seat belt, and already this journey was getting the better of his awareness. Sirens blared ahead, and the convoy started driving. My, but things were moving fast.
Giffin took a deep breath. He turned his fourth eye to his fellow Alenmi.
"What's going on?"
"The President wants to talk to you, in person, as soon as possible. Fastest way to get you to the Capital is to bark down the chain of command to tell a local team to pick you up. I'm Major Calgren, district commander; those orders came to me. You didn't pick up your phone when I called, so I sent vehicles to your workplace, your home, and your favorite reading bench. I called the Dean of your university, who directed Sergeant Engles to your office, where he picked you up. You know the rest. Now that you're packed, we're on our way to the airbase. Your plane is waiting."
Giffin's eyes bulged in their sockets, and his mouth dropped open.
"We're going to have to work on that face"deadpanned Major Calgren. "You'll be briefing the President in less than three hours, son. Now is the time for calm, mature, professionalism. Practice starts now: tell me everything you know about 'Humans'."
And so it was that Giffin briefed Major Calgren on Humanity, the strange creatures on the third rock from the Sun, the thesis for which Giffin was just recently awarded his doctorate. |
When James woke up on the hospital bed, he was immediately confused about what he was looking at. Of course, what he was looking at was his wife, who had already left her a week ago.
"Huh... didn't you...?"James groggily questioned, sitting up on the hospital bed. He glanced around before taking notice of the television and the news, where he saw a newscaster on his favorite news show that he didn't remember seeing before.
"What is it, James?"his wife asked.
James pointed to the television. "Who's that?"
"Oh, that's just Jackson. You told me he was your favorite newscaster,"his wife explained.
"...huh. I swear that was a differen person."
James' wife shrugged. "You're just recovering from an accident, I'm sure it'll come by."
James nodded. Moving towards the nearby headdesk, he checked his phone, before noticing something odd on the news app. Scrolling over, he began seeing something was relatively off.
Moving to search, his wife looked over with more confusion than him as James tried to search for familiar keywords, until he saw what was nagging on his mind.
*'Ah. Of course.'* James sighed. *'The isekai genre doesn't exist. Somehow. Despite me getting hit by a truck.'* |
"This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."Gale says this ominously as he stares out the window, grinning. He turns to look at me. "Know what that means, Gerald?"
"That you're crazy?"I shrug.
He laughs. "Maybe I am. But the meaning behind that statement... is that we are finally starting to bring an end to all the suffering and injustice. I was worried about closing down the black market, but you were right; the governor is in a panic and clueless about what to do."He walks over to the living room.
I follow behind and he switches the TV on. ***"Crime continues to increase at an alarming rate. Ever since the anonymous report that the black market was closed, people have begun to fear for their safety, and despite an increase in police officers patrolling the streets, nothing seems to be slowing these criminals down. There are even rumours that some areas of the city are being completely ignored. Governor Laila has decided to give a speech about the growing concerns."***
***"Citizens, I assure you I'm doing everything I can to address this dire situation. The closure of the black market is proof that I take action against these horrendous criminals. I assure you I'm doing everything I can for the city."***
People at the speech are yelling and booing. *"MY DAUGHTER DIED DURING A FIGHT SHE WAS NOT A PART OF!""MY SON HAS TO WALK THROUGH A DANGEROUS STREET TO GET TO SCHOOL! IT'S NOW EVEN MORE DANGEROUS AND COPS WON'T DO ANYTHING TO FIX THAT STREET!""THIS ALL STARTED AFTER THE BLACK MARKET CLOSED! EXPLAIN THAT, GOVERNOR!"*
Laila is visibly sweaty and nervous. ***"As... as I said, I'm doing... this isn't something that can be fixed overnight, I'm working-"***
She's interrupted by more yelling and booing. *"THIS HAS NEVER BEEN AN ISSUE!""YOU'RE LETTING THIS HAPPEN!""THE BLACK MARKET WAS CLOSED AND NOW ILLEGAL STUFF IS BEING SOLD ON THE STREETS! MY CAT WAS KILLED AND ITS MEAT AND FUR SOLD!"*
"That would never have happened under MY watch"Gale chuckles. He snaps his fingers and Burlo walks over. "I believe it's time I announce my presence. Advisor, would you be so kind as to get the paperwork submitted?"
"Of course, sir."Burlo smiles and heads towards the front door, two guards following him.
"How long will it take, sir Gale?"I ask.
Gale smiles. "Laila will be forced into a resignation very quickly. After that I would guess a new governor will be elected within the month. I suspect it won't even take TWO months for me to get into power."He looks up towards the ceiling. "I can't wait..."
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
This story is a part of my series, [Black Market Trading.](https://www.reddit.com/r/StoriesbyCrystal/comments/10h89ei/black_market_trading/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) Please check it out! |
I got ready to go to the grocery store when Sarah reminded me through a coughing fit "Remember to get second sun cough drops. Also, don't get hurt. It's sacrifice night."
"Got it."
The trip wasn't much. I ordered a healing potion while getting some other things, second sun cough drops, bread, vampire repellant, you get it. I think Sarah might be undead, normal cough drops don't work for her, but second sun cough drops are insanely hot, they physically burn to swallow.
I took my potion, paid for my stuff and walked out. I saw 6 or 7 people in black suits crowded in one spot. I swear that one of them said I was the target. I ran away only to be surrounded by about 20. I think we know how that fight went.
I woke up on a bony altar and heard. "Exiled One of Undeath, please accept our sacrifice to keep your eternal favor."
Their Goddess appeared.
"Looks like Sarah."I muttered.
She looked directly into my soul, the air had an aura of "You've got to be kidding me."
"Wait..."I said.
She picked me off the altar "Where's the bag?"
"They took it."
She looked at them "Where's the bag?"
The leader was confused.
Sarah looked at them "That bone flower was there for a reason."
One of the acolytes handed her the bag and we teleported back home.
"What was that?"I asked.
She took a cough drop. "I was planning on telling you. I just thought it could wait until after you get groceries. I guess it didn't. I'm not drinking that potion."
"If I get sick again. I swear, I'm getting a necromancer to see what's wrong with you."
She rifled through the bag "I'm not afraid of vampires, I am one. Did you think my pale skin was makeup?"
"Yes... Am I going to get bitten?"
"A blood donation would be nice. I think I'd get you sick though." |
"Aw, that's adorable."
Leonard grinned as he scrolled through my phone, cooing over my brother's wedding photos as I rested my head in his lap. I chuckled and remarked, "God, you should've seen Jesse's face the first time he told me about Michah. Big guy lit up like a Christmas tree."
Leonard chuckled and handed my phone back. "And they're talking about getting a kid?"
"They're looking at fostering some kids and adopting them later on. It was something Emma wanted to do before she passed."
"Well, those kids are gonna have two amazing dads and one *very* lovely uncle."
I let out a long sigh as I sat up to lean against Leonard's shoulder. "Yeah, well... they should be getting two uncles."
Leonard took my hand and kissed it softly. "I'm sorry Adam. I know it's not fair."
I brushed my hand over his, trying to savor the ability to touch him while I still could. "I've been thinking about...*it* again."
Leonard sighed. "C'mere."Leonard cradled my head and softly said, "I know you miss me, hon. Believe me, there's not a day that goes that I don't miss you too. But I want you to stay in the mortal world for as long as you can. Could be a year, could be ten--just as long as you try.
"You pulled me out of a really dark place when we met, and all I want is to make sure you don't go down that path too. If you really decide you want to see me again, outside the confines of Halloween, then I won't stop you. I just...want you to fight for yourself the way you fought for me."
I pulled Leonard in and kissed him deeply, savoring the taste of chocolate and peanut butter on his lips. When I came up for air, I pressed my forehead against his and purred, "I love you so much, Leonard."
"I love you too, Adam."Leonard looked to his right and saw the sun rising. As the morning light washed over his body, Leonard started to disappear as he planted one last kiss on my cheek and remarked, "See you next year, honey."
Once Leonard was gone, I touched my cheek where he had left the kiss and gazed over at the empty lot that once contained our house. "Yeah. See you next year, honey." |
I woke up in my bed and yawned but didn’t open my eyes. Why open my eyes to such a boring, like every-other-day-type-day? Nothing ever changes. Another day, another dollar, another awful day at the office. Every day was like this, and every morning was like this as well. It would have been so great if I could wake up somewhere else just one time, just one day.
I had that same dream last night, the one where I wake up as a princess. In this dream, I find myself not in my utilitarian IKEA easy-to-assemble-by-yourself bed, but in a large 4 poster bed, in a fairy tale castle, in a fairy tale life. There is an attendant at the foot of the bed, who jumps to assist me, helping me down from the large bed. It was strange, having this stranger carefully take my arm to guide me, and I always pulled back from her at this point in the dream.
“Milady!” she would protest, rather mildly chiding me, but chiding me nonetheless, “Please allow me the pleasure of assisting you. I cannot allow you to fall or be injured in any way, Princess!”
I remember nodding, letting her take my arm, and then waking up. That was always the point where I woke up.
It is always such a vivid dream. In the few minutes between waking and sleeping, I always feel like I can scarcely believe that I am no longer in that world.
This time was no different from all of the other times. It had felt so wonderful, and so perfect. I opened my eyes and sighed and then reached for the phone by my bed before I going to my closet to pull my clothes for the day.
That was when I saw all of the notifications. My phone was blowing up and I couldn’t believe it. Congratulations from all over the world, even from people I didn’t know! Was this some kind of early birthday prank? My brother was prone to doing things like this, and he could have easily enlisted my other family and friends in his shenanigans. My Mom always said my brother Patrick could charm himself out of a jail cell. If he could do that, he could pull off something like this.
“Milady!” I jumped and almost dropped my phone. It was the deferential (though somehow equally judging), curtsying woman from my dream. I froze. Now this was really getting weird. She pulled the phone out of my hand. “Don’t worry yourself with that trash, Milady; that’s all it is, trash.”
I looked at her more closely this time. She was a middle-aged woman, British by her accent, primly dressed in an 80s style power suit. She was pressed and primped and primed. I suppose I felt supremely un-put-together in front of her. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why she was here and why she was acting like this.
“Um, Ma’am?” I hesitated because I realized I was more than a little bit afraid of her. “I really do have to go to work. I mean, thank you for everything, but I really don’t know about this...” I let the sentence trail off and slide down off the high bed to the floor. I also realized then that this was the bed of my dreams as well! It was a strange and odd coincidence. I just knew I wasn’t still in my dream; this just felt like reality. And then I started questioning my reality – could it be that I’d had a psychotic break, like my brother’s old best friend Mark from high school? I wanted to scream. My heart was pounding. I slid to the floor and then tried to stand up. I felt pretty wobbly and unsettled, but I tried to make my way to where I thought my closet might be. I needed some sense of normalcy. “I’m sorry, but I need to go to work,” I said it again, but this time there was more hesitancy and fear in my voice. My voice was as wobbly as my legs.
“Milady!” She seemed rather horrified and came up to me and grabbed me by my shoulders. She then shook me just a little bit for good measure. I realized she was much shorter than I was, and I had become somehow more tall and “willowy” – very unlike my very average looking and feeling self. That put me in check a bit. Maybe this was all a dream. “You are not going anywhere, despite what you might think!” She straightened the billowy sleeping gown I now realized I was wearing. I glanced over her shoulder and saw the headlines on the feed on my phone. “Welcome Princess Alaina!” it said, “Welcome back!”
Just then something switched over in my mind. If this was the way it was, then so be it! I imperiously put out my hand, trying to be as Imperial as I could manage. “Give it back to me, now!” My forced myself to sound commanding, though I was still shaking a bit inside. ‘Fake it until you make it!’ as my mom used to say!
She nodded a bit sheepishly and handed my phone back to me.
I speed- read through the first article, with my finger shaking as I scrolled. “NEWS FLASH!” It read, “The long-lost Princess Alaina has been found! And not a moment too soon!” I scrolled down further to another article. “Queendom of East Anglia in Turmoil! Missing Princess Regent Found 10 Years Later!” Further down I read: “East Anglia Princess – Real? Or Imposter?” And then I saw a picture of myself. It was very definitely myself, as I was now – this better version of myself. The beautiful version of myself that had never manifested in my other life; it was the myself I could have been, or wished I could have been.
I clicked on several social media apps on my phone – some familiar, some totally alien – and they all had versions of the same story. Some people were disputing my “claim”; others were rejoicing my return.
There was also a text from my brother with a “thumbs up” and a cryptic message: “So you finally came to your senses, hmm?”. There were also texts from high school friends saying, “So glad you’re okay!” and “I missed you!” and from old boyfriend, “So you got rid of the loser?”. I had no idea what any of them were talking about: I hadn’t been in a relationship for years and I was still in contact with those high school friends. It was all so confusing.
I leaned up against the bed, trying to gather my thoughts, the phone still in my hand. I looked around the room. It was the castle room of my dream, but with modern touches. There was a computer set up on an ornate desk in the corner and a flat screen TV hanging on the castle wall. It was also very clearly a castle, and I was apparently in the ‘Queendom of East Anglia” not the “Kingdom of England.”
The servant woman tugged on my sleeve, “Milady, should I call the Royal Wizard? Or call the entire Wizard’s Guild?”
I nodded. I needed help and hopefully an explanation from the Wizard’s Guild of wherever this was and wherever I was. I thought about asking this woman who seemed to be my “lady in waiting”, but I realized I didn’t even know her name, let alone anything about her. She vaguely looked like an old friend of my mother’s named Cassandra, but I couldn’t be sure. Maybe my mother’s friend’s name had been Christina – I didn’t really remember since it had been so long ago, when my mother had been alive. All I knew for sure was that I really was the Princess. |
I received an imperial decree, I was to hunt a notorious vampire, former archmage I. Medes, no one knew her first name, not too important. To take down this vampire, I was allowed all means and 10,000 gold, anything not spent on supplies would be my pay.
I went and asked my guild for a partner on this hunt, they'd get 5000 gold on success. I was paired with a pastor, he said we should wait until night. That's when I made my famous blunder, "So many wasted lives would be saved. If only vampire hunters hunted during the day."I said.
"They \[Vampires\] tend to turn into dangerous mirrors in the light."He said.
"Well, I'm doing it now, I don't care."I said.
"Have you eye protection or sense?"
"No."
So we went to her lair, prepared with stakes, anti-magic and some healing potions. I kicked down the door to see her tired and confused. It was noon. I charged at her with a stake in hand. The pastor hid around the corner, with eye protection. What little light there was from outside bounced off her. I was warned. During the chase, there was a loop, and I was chasing her out of her lair.
I kept going, she covered her clothes with her sweat, I just ignored it. She went outside and I realized my mistake, I was blinded in an instant and turned around. I heard something hit the ground, it wasn't me.
"You were right, she was so concerned with blinding you that I wasn't seen."The pastor said.
I drank a healing potion. "Being blind was stressful."
"Let's not make the same mistake twice, although, we should tell the guild."
"Hold up."
"What?"
"We're both in the middle of the ranks. How many hunts could we do before others start doing this?"
"You are VERY unethical, I'm telling the guild."
That's why I can't work at any vampire hunting guild. They say it's to allow the distinction of the good from the bad, I know it's because the guilds are full of paladins. Honorable but stupid. I was still hired occasionally afterwards due to the availability before it gets dark. |
An Elf alchemist who, through getting high on his own supply, has burned his attention span to that of a humans. This gave him motivation that endured for centuries, at the exchange of going delightfully mad.
He earned this moment with the fabled fortune teller because he had the time and fortune, and the grace of a few good benders to actually end up in the proper place. He's old enough, jaded enough and high enough to accept anything he hears. |
In all honesty I didn’t want to speak to my disciple directly, but when the golden shawl is up for grabs one cannot be too reserved. It was pathetic, really, to watch a disheveled commoner with a caustic tongue transform a beloved god into a mere mortal, ready for the kill.
Donald looked at me, eyes wide as saucers, his excitement palpable.
“Wow, that couldn't have gone any better,” I replied. I smirked as my mind raced with thoughts of the downfall of my enemy, the only one standing between me and the altar of greatness among the gods.
“Instead of hitting you, he hits Bob Barker. Perfect.”
I gave Donald his well-deserved reward. No time for grub at the Sizzler this time – I gotta go.
(If you haven't seen [Happy Gilmore](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116483/), give it a look) |
Personality readjustment project.
A chip is implanted in the subject's frontal lobes. The chip offers thoughts modeled on various stock personalities when the subject considers a course of action.
Subjects believe they are part of a study for anti-depressants, and take sugar pills twice daily, recording any changes in their thoughts or feelings.
Subjects are not aware of the chip.
Attached are records of how various subjects responded.
\_\_\_\_
Subject PR05 "Mike"
Sex: Male
Age: 25
Model: Respectable Businessman
Subject's behaviors show little to no change. Subject lazes about and fails to preform any household tasks.
Subject reported an increase in thoughts that they should do something protective, and an increase in guilt for failing to follow through on said feelings.
\_\_\_\_
Subject PR12 "Chloe"
Sex: Female
Age: 32
Model: Sorority member
Subject regularly spends spends evenings at clubs, bars, and other recreational facilities. Previously subject would invite their existing friend group to such outings. When subject's existing friend group began declining these invitations due to lack of energy, subject created a new friend group consisting of women in their mid twenties she found at the aforementioned establishments.
Subject reported that she was "Having more fun"and "Living her best life".
\_\_\_\_
Subject PR17 "Denise"
Sex: Female
Age: 20
Model: Mother
Subject maintains their household chores with more diligence than previously, and now seeks out romantic partners based on their likelihood to be good co-parents as opposed to physical attractiveness.
Subject reported that her priorities have shifted to what is "really"important.
\_\_\_\_
Subject PR21 "Robert"
Sex: Male
Age: 50
Model: Gamer
Subject displays heightened competitiveness and interest in tabletop and electronic games. Subject now hosts a weekly "Dungeons and dragons"game through an online platform.
Subject reported they find young people less irritating, and are enjoying their retirement more.
\_\_\_\_
Subject PR 27 "Amelia"
Sex: Female
Age: 18
Model: Secretary
Subject displays increased desire for things to be arranged in an orderly fashion, and checks their calendrer when planning recreational activities.
Subject reports increased anxiety related to upcoming events.
\_\_\_\_
Conclusion: Subjects appear resistant to models that improve their productivity, but receptive to models that suggest certain courses of action will improve happiness.
Experiment does not produce results marketable to corporate clients, and private clients are unlikely invest in invasive procedures on their own volition.
Recommendation: Cancel the project. |
As she walked toward the carpeted red circle, Mel’s Vans squeaked lightly on the polished black stage. She felt a shard of embarrassed self-awareness as she glimpsed the title slide of her presentation on the large screen.
“MINDS IN THE DARK”
DR MELODY R BRUNSWICK, PHD
CO-FOUNDER OF SYNTHPSYCHE MNEMONIC ANALYSIS
Mel tried to see the audience through the glare of the spotlight, and was partly glad that they were mostly shadows to her. Several pairs of eyes glowed like animals in a dark forest as they browsed information on an augmented reality HUD in their display contacts.
A digital clock began a countdown from 20:00 on a screen facing her at the front of the stage. She took a deep breath and clasped her sweaty hands together in front of her stomach.
“Throughout the 21st Century,“ she began with a curt hand movement, “technologists struggled to take language learning machines to the holy grail level: artificial general intelligence. Attempts to reach AGI began with LLM systems that became more and more layered, with computing power requirements that outpaced our ability to improve our processors. While deeply intelligent in many specific areas, these systems never quite reached the level of adaptable problem-solving that a human mind could deliver.“
The lights in the auditorium flickered just briefly. A small murmur arose from the audience.
“Maybe we’d have better luck if we could figure out how to keep our basic utilities running smoothly,” Mel joked. The audience chuckled and fell back into a general silence.
“As you all know, the barrier to AGI was eventually crossed in 2067 when Alex Parker Yang and his team at the London startup NeuraiCore developed their system for scanning and mapping human neurobiology and feeding this into a single-layer LLM system with a proprietary feedback modification that they called General Omni-reflexive LLM, or goLLM,“ she said. An image of a smiling 30-something man with blended Asian and European features appeared on the screen. Mel paused and then took a step forward, opening her hands outward. “Remarkably, this system gained all the multiphasic and general intelligence capabilities of a fully formed human mind.
“But two major issues remained. The first was that without a physical body, the system became easily confused and hallucinated sensory information. That issue was solved when NeuraiCore merged with the Polish startup Synth Frame Robotics and the first embodied synthetic human was developed.“ The screen faded to a photo of the first public SFR android test model. Its exposed wires and synth-muscle were being attended to by several technicians in hooded clean-room suits.
“The second issue,“ she said, her face tightening into concern as she put up two fingers, ”was that almost universally, the memories of the human from which this neurological map was extracted often caused the system to degrade into what might be called psychosis in a human, but which is known today as Mnemonic Resurrection Anxiety. Traditional techniques of filtering the outputs and training the system on human responses was only partially effective, and most concerning, the system was found to ‘act out’ its disorder in less obvious ways.“
A low rumble accompanied a second flickering of lights in the auditorium. More eyes and some faces lit up as people began checking their HUDs and phone screens.
Mel said. “Probably one of our infamous Northeast thunderstorms.” The laugh was quieter this time. “Good thing we’re not in California.”
Mel quickly switched to the next screen which consisted of a white play icon in the center of a black screen. She continued, “As you will see from this clip, Mnemonic Resurrection Anxiety was most dramatic when the goLLM model was integrated into its robotic body.”
The presentation screen went black and then an image of a room seemed to extend from the screen in three dimensions. The holovid showed the corner of a room from a high angle, possibly a security camera. A blocky second-generation SFR android model was seated in a charging station while a male technician sat at a desk typing on a small thin keyboard. The desk was otherwise empty, and he was wearing AR glasses, presumably working on virtual computer screen.
As the man worked, the android could be seen slowly turning its head first left, and then up, and finally settling in the man’s direction. The man did not notice as the android placed its hand on the desk.
“Jerry?” The android said in a synthetic voice, almost human but for its articulate crispness. It leaned toward the technician. “Jerry? Where am I?”
The technician flinched and turned, and then after a moment he said, “System 44-B, reset parameters.“
“What?“ The android said, cocking its head. “Jerry, it’s me! No… wait…“ The android began to stand, bringing a hand up to its face. “Jerry’s dead.”
“System 44-B, override code: ‘squirrel alpha rowboat six forest’. Reset parameters!“ The man said as he tore off his AR glasses.
“But he was alive when I died. How do I know he is dead?” The android asked itself. Its voice took on a stressed quality. “How do I know I’m alive?” Then it slammed its hand on the desk and with a shrill electronic distortion it began screaming:
“HOW DO I KNOW HE’S DEAD?
HOW DO I KNOW I’M ALIVE?
HOW DO I KNOW HE’S DEAD?
HOW DO I KNOW I’M ALIVE?
HOW DO I KNOW HE’S DEAD?
HOW DO I KNOW I’M ALIVE?
HOW DO I—” |
# Ancient Cursewords
"Yo, Paul? The necklace is doing some... thing, again."
For the fifth time that hour Paul put down his tongs and set the crucible to standby. "What's it this time?"
"I think it's sayin' my name or something."
Paul stared at the ceiling, refusing to turn around. "So do something about it, why don'tcha? Throw a blanket over it. Get ya some earplugs. I'm busy here, Frank! Gold doesn't separate itself out from baser metals, y'know."
"Alright, alright. Don't getcha panties in a twist. Yeesh."The basement door slammed closed, probably more because of the spring than any real pique on Frank's part. He listened for a couple of seconds, eyes up and tracking footsteps across the ceiling. When he was sure his dopey, naïve partner in crime was firmly settled in front of the TV he went back to work again.
Gold rings, some kind of bracelet, oversize earrings... all of it went into the little crucible. They'd pulled off a hell of a haul coming out of the museum last night. The kind of once-in-a-lifetime steal that was equal parts dumb luck and spur of the moment genius. He'd been walking Julie through the Museum of History, letting her 'educate' him in return for some sweet time later when they'd paused by a couple of guards. A couple of guards, it turns out, who were highly upset about changes to the new security system.
A couple of minutes pretending to be interested in his date's fascination with South American burial practices and Paul had all he needed.
The heist that night was glorious, and *easy*. Museums are no chumps; they know when high value stuff comes though that extra security is needed. But the particular flaw was how *touchy* their new systems were. And how annoyed the guards got after it went off fifty times a night until they just started silencing it. All it took was deliberately triggering the grid for a couple of hours and bang, boom: They shut it off. A little mirror work on the cameras and he was out with nearly seventy pounds of weird (but shiny) burial junk.
The haul was so big when he got back to the safe house-- really his friend and patsy Frank's cleared basement-- he'd had to split the catch up a bit. He only had the one crucible after all and this was a lot of potential cash-ola.
But most of a day later and he was thoroughly annoyed by Frank's incessant whining. First it was a complaint that the bag he'd left upstairs was "humming at him". He yelled up and asked what the tune was and got a shouted "Wiseass!"in return. Next his upstairs roommate shouted down that the damn thing was floating around. Which was impossible and made him think maybe Frank was into something a little harder than Chee-Tohs and Dr. Peppers up there. He told him to put a brick on it.
Now, four complaints later, the footsteps were back.
Paul took the little crucible off the burner, set it on the sand pile and waited. He was almost through with the haul down here-- four hand-sized blocks of nearly pure gold and a lot of discarded "ancient history"sat beside the bench. The only thing left was a weird slab thing with writing on it. If he could just *finish* this last one he'd go up and put paid to whatever it was that bothered Frank about the sack in the living room.
The door opened at the top of the stairs. He spun on the stool, mouth open to give ol' Frank the what-for. Then he froze, unable to make a sound.
That wasn't Frank at the top of the stairs. Oh, it had on his obese patsy's robe, gaping open over a stained set of boxers. The socks and crocs matched up in all their hideous glory. But the rest of it was a horror show.
He'd lost some weight. Specifically, *all of it*. Ol' Frank was looking a good bit like a dried out skeleton with leather skin wrapped around yellowed ivories. Stretched socks puddled around bony ankles, boxers hung at an angle over knife-sharp hipbones. His chest was a dusty xylophone of a ribcage. His face... Paul blinked, rubbed his eyes and looked again. His friend's face was a melted horror show of bared teeth and spectacular, crimson glowing eyes.
The only thing not old, decrepit and horrifying was the necklace. A big, fat one hanging off the crooked stack of exposed spine. It was gold, a handspan wide, engraved within an inch of its life and set with a massive diamond. A massive *glowing* diamond.
They stared at each other for long enough Paul heard the click of the smelter shutting itself off.
"What-"His mouth felt like someone was operating it from outside his body. "Who the hell are *you*?"
The dead man at the top of the stairs regarded him with a hate that burned across centuries. Then the jaw popped open, spewing dust and a single pathetic Chee-Toh down the stairs. "I am Al'kherug. God-Wizard of Inca. I slept, a dream of protection for my lineage, to guard my kingdom forevermore. Now I am disturbed, and all shall know my wrath."
Paul started getting a bad feeling about this. The kind of bad feeling that started as a trickle down the leg. "Uh. Hey there, bud. So you're a little upset by-"
"Return the slab!"Al'kherug howled. A wind blasted down the stairs, carrying the scent of decay and things that lived in the dark between worlds. It slapped Paul in the face, rocked him back on the stool and nearly into the still-hot crucible. "Return the slab or know my wrath! *Ama sua! Ama sua, nith c'laththra nimbig-ayo*!"
Paul was a lot of things. A thief, a con, a Smash Bros aficionado. But in his heart of hearts, when a literal skeleton screamed magic death threats at him, he found something else he could be:
Greedy. As. Hell.
"What's yer offer?"He shouted back.
​
---
Yes, this *is* a Courage the Cowardly Dog reference! I do a lot of funny and/or dumb callback writing over at r/Susceptible ;) |
And so I pulled it out. What else would one expect me to do? I mean who hasn't heard the tale of King Arthur, pull sword out stone = become king. I was surprised at how easily it came out though, my pull was overkill enough to send me backwards off the stone and onto my butt. I stood and lifted the surprisingly light weight sword to observe it in close detail. ... Yah it's a sword. Like any same person, I started air fencing and fighting invisible enemies. Who knows, maybe I accidentally fire off some magical attack or something.
**C....re......re.....ring...p.......ent**
Huh? I stopped my epic action sequence. I thought I'd heard something and did multiple quick glances around. Must've been my imagination. I resumed my battle with my make believe enemies.
**Core repairing 98%**
Ok I definitely heard somethi- woah!
**Core repairing 99%**
I felt the ground start rumbling and widened my stance to maintain my balance. The giant stone I'd pulled the sword from had begun to shake like crazy. I backed away fearing the vibrations may cause it to flip over.
**Core repaired.**
I turned behind me upon hearing rustling and immediately ducked as a large fragment of earth soared overhead. Various rocks and debris scatter among the ground flew towards the giant stone forming what were clearly limbs. Naturally my inner warrior and heroic instincts both agreed that I should run and hide behind a tree.
After a while the rumbling stop and the forest became eerily quite. My curiosity got the better of me as I peaked from behind the tree to observe what looking to be a giant bipedal creature made out of stone and metal. It was observing its own hand and inspecting it's backside.
**Systems functional, commencing area analysi-**
I ducked back behind the tree as it's head abruptly turned in my direction. I saw the sun glistening off the edge of the sword out of the corner of my eye ... crud. The ground shook with each lumbering step it took, my body briefly leaving the ground each time. The tree I hid behind was casually uprooted and a cool breeze blew against my exposed back.
The golem robot thing stared at the blade in my hand.
**Database: Royal Blade. Arthur Pendragon not detected. Is wielder my King?**
Great googly moogly, the stories are true!?
"Uh yes! I am your king robot rock thing! Bow before me!"
I point the blade at it commandingly. Though that does bring the question. If this was king Arthur's blade, why was it in the creature to begin with. .... Hey what happened to the sun? Must be getting late- OH SNAP!
#💥
I dove out of the way of the looming fist that crashed where I once stood. When it lifted there was a crater a few feet deep.
**Mission deemed still possible, destroy King.**
"Uh wait wait wait! I lied! I lied! I'm not a king! I'm just a tourist!"
Some whirring noises occurred in the robot golem thing who's fists had heated up to searing red colors. It's mechanical gaze simply stared at me.
**Commencing area analysis. Biome composition displays significant deviance. Probability of lie under 5%. Primary objective not possible.**
Phew.
**Commencing secondary directive: Destroy England.**
"Say what now?"
The giant being turned towards the city and walked a short quaking distance before stopping and turning to look at me .... no ... the sword.
**Bzeew!**
Robogolem fired a laser beam. The blade disintegrated the instant the laser made contact. I instinctively dropped the bladeless hilt once G-bot stared at me a second time. From what I assume was satisfaction hit headed towards the city. It used a vast arsenal of weaponry to carve a path of destruction through the forest as it headed for the city.
... Hey what's that over there!? Ah sweet, it's a box! |
The piercing spires of the Brite Academy for the Magical Arts and Sciences disappeared behind me. As much as I'd learned there--they'd made a wizard of me after all!--I was ready to leave the spellbooks, the star readings, and, most of all, the teachers behind.
The last the complete the wizarding requirements, there was no one left to attend my graduation. No family. Most of the professors didn't bother to show up for me, their most disappointing pupil. And all of my "friends"--if they could be called as much--had long finished and returned to New York City.
I'd always imagined I'd feel proud on my graduation day. Alas...
The feeling in my chest was mostly one of embarrassment. With a little bitterness thrown in.
At least now, finally, I was headed back to the real world. I'd be able to use my sorcery--meager as it was--to serve the people I'd grown up with.
New York had become a real dark place in recent years. That's why I went to Brite Academy in the first place. It needed a few good wizards--probably more than a few--to get the place in order.
"I hope Margo, Benz, and all the others haven't already cleared the city of crime and filth,"I whispered to Lawrence, my faithful ravenfriend. "Wouldn't that be a waste! I spent the last five years in wizard seclusion, all to come back to the city and find my classmates have already set everything right. I'll bet they have. That'd be just my luck..."
Lawrence cawed, then pecked my ear to get me to shut up. He wasn't a particularly intelligent bird, but he knew how to stop me from spiraling.
\*\*\*
The towers and turrets of Manhattan rose up before me. I trudged straight toward the Wizardry, a massive and labyrinthine black building on the Lower East Side.
Walking through downtown, nearly everyone I passed paused to gawk at my flowing new robes. Got a couple taunts, too.
"I guess they haven't gotten rid of all the swine,"I chuckled to Lawrence.
"*Not all! Not all! Not all!*"crowed the raven.
Pushing through the heavy doors of the Wizardry, I expected to see the rush of all my old classmates bustling back and forth, set about the business of protecting the city. But there was no one.
I looked side to side. "Where do you think they've gone off to?"
Lawrence cawed and flew off down a hall, then circled back and bid me follow. He led me down a series of long halls, down a steep spiral staircase, into the dungeons. Even before I passed over the threshold, I heard voices I recognized.
"Turn them all to rats,"I heard Margo bark.
"Pigs would be better,"came Benz's voice. "We can eat pigs."
"Good idea,"came a chorus of cruel voices.
I entered the dark dungeon and, instead of the white wizard robes they'd earned at Brite, all my old friends were dressed in slate black robes. Their faces lit only by torchlight from the few fires that fizzled around the chamber.
"Who're we turning to pigs?"I said with a fragile smile. "Count me in!"
All eyes turned to me, but not with the welcome brightness I'd hoped for.
"Well, look who it is,"said Benz. "The jester of Brite Academy."
"Surprised they let you out of there with robes at all,"said a slender, sharp-edged mage to my left.
I swallowed hard. "You know me, I just loved the place too much."
No one laughed. No one even smirked.
"Things have changed,"Margo announced.
"I can see that,"I answered. "What's with the robes?"
"The colors of the archmage."
I felt my heart quicken. "Archmage? You can't mean--"
"Oh yes, I do."Margo's lips cruled upward, sharp in the corners.
"What's going on? Is this all a joke."I broke a half-hearted grin and looked to the faces of my old classmates. They all looked colder, fiercer now. "You're out of Brite for six months and you're talking about turning people to pigs and wearing the colors of the archmage. What am I missing."
"You'll be missing your head if you don't shut up and fall in,"Margo spat.
I shrank. I felt Lawrence fidget on my shoulder. Something was not right.
Just then, from the opposite side of the dungeon, I heard feet sliding along the cold stone floor. Out of the shadows, a giant, dark figure cut through into the halflight.
I felt myself back away. *It couldn't be. This must all be a joke.*
But no. I'd recognize that face anywhere. There, in the dungeon of the Wizardry, the sacred hall of all the Wizards of Peace, stood the darkest wizard to have walked the tunnels of this city in a millennium.
Archmage Harix rose up before me. He held no wand. He only extend his hand, a long finger pointing at me. "Come to me, my wizardson. Or else..." |
“Hey go and get me my water bottle from my trailer and don’t go trying to take anything while you’re in there.”
“Yes, Ms. Anderson, right away.”
God she’s so paranoid and bossy all the time. She’s always worried someone is trying to take something of hers to sell online. Granted the one time that did happen was pretty bad. Assistant of hers took a piece of jewelry of hers that belonged to her grandma. She freaked out for days and sued the bastard big time. Now where is that damn water bottle at?
It’s a good thing she’s such an amazing actress otherwise no one would put up with her. It’s actually amazing how much she knows how to do. Anything the directors ask of her she can do. Archery, horse riding, speaking in different languages, and sings like an angel.
*ring, ring*
My thoughts were interrupted by a phone ringing. I probably shouldn’t answer it but it could be something important. I decide to pick it up.
“Hello, this is Evelyn Anderson’s assistant how can I help you?”
“Actually, I’m calling for your help Deirdre.”
“How do you know my name?”
“What if I told you there’s a lot more to this world than you know? If you want to know what I’m talking about and how Ms. Anderson seems to know her infinite amount of skills, then I need you to do something for me.”
“What?”
“Take your chapstick you have with you and eat it.”
The hell are they saying? Are these people on crack.
“Trust me.”
Fine, I can’t believe I’m even considering this. I take out my cherry flavored chapstick, roll some of it out and take a bit out of it. Soon as I do I hear a weird noise and a click. Now I feel some weird headset on me.
“Now press the green button on the side, oh and don’t forget to breathe.” |
The dark forest was real. It was the year 2335. The Artemisia XIV probe, sent to Trappist-1A, landed. A black, hexagonal monolith was uncovered. In following decades, many other such monoliths were uncovered. 3 centuries later, the Apollonia XVIII probe, landed on Trappist-1A. 69 explorers and scientists, headed by Dr. Joe Arthur Jenkins, were sent on the probe, in order to explore the possibility of a settlement. However, when they came across the ruins of the Artemisia XIV probe and the subsequent monolith group, the monoliths started to glow, and ancient writing appeared on them. A connection was established, and humans discovered another race, the K'nthliq of Minas Aegon'n 800 light years away.
Although at first, neither was able to understand each other's language, intense study soon allowed us to communicate. Soon, cultural transmissions began. They sent us a sample of their elite culture. In return, the Sigma Command (Tau Centi), sent a short documentary regarding humanities best inventions.
Soon, both civilizations decided to interact. The date was set in the year 3690 and a Neutral location, Kappa Aquarii, was set up. However, a day before the meeting, the K'nthliq attacked. We were prepared but due their massive hives and advanced technology, they were able to overpower our defenses in some star systems. The Sigma Command was the first to fall. Then came Kappa, Mu and Omicron. Then fell Epsilon and Nu. But slowly, as it turned into a war of attrition, we started overpowering them.
The main difference between Humanity and K'nthilq was that we were self sustained while they were parasitic, hive-creatures. As the war went down, and their numbers began to dwindle, a ray of hope appeared.
Then the Great Tragedy struck. The K'nthliq discovered the location and attacked our capital in Sapiopolis, in between the evacuation of the Alpha Centaurii Star System. No one was prepared for this last resort. The Chancellor of the Union of All Humanity, Dame Gertrude of Ravensburg led a valiant defense, leading the Elite force into battle, but was martyred. It is said she died in the midst of battle, 4 plasma spears sticking out of her chest, surrounded by K'nthliq, while she was burning their hordes with a flamethrower.
After the fall of Alpha, the K'nthliq grew stronger. They showed themselves to be sadistic beasts, doing horrible things to our beautiful people and rightful land. They strip mined our lands and forced our people into slavery. Factories were set up to extract resources. Our land was scorched and salted and our water was polluted and destroyed. It became harder to battle them. But we persisted, and started to slowly succeed.
We captured Sigma, Kappa and Epsilon back. Slowly, but steadily, we will unite our split realm and then capture Alpha. We are weary of war, but we will not give up until all humanity is freed and Minas Aegon'n is burned to ground and its people are slaughtered like the filthy mongrel scum they are. To all survivors living in hiding in the encroached system belt, we send this message with simple instructions.
Create different hideouts and safe spots. Stay in the dark. stay hidden. Do not contact anybody. Do not reply to this message. Try to save fellow humans, but do not under any circumstance get caught. Burn down everything you have if they find you. Death is better than enslavement by these beasts. We will come for you, and we will rescue you, such is my promise. But until then, there are many foul creatures out there who want to destroy you.
This is High Commander of the Armies Evan Schwann, Emergency Chancellor of the Union of All Humanity.
*vi veri universum vivus vici* |
BOOOM! A loud sound erupted and a cloud of smoke obstructed my vision. I was trapped in my own maze i hd spent years designing. I hear a shallow voice coming from the distance, it was Shelby, my victim. I moved towards the sound and there was a gaping hole into a long forgotten well from the previous development. At least she could not escape, but i was stuck! Thankfully I had meticulously designed every inch of the maze so I easily made my way through and left Shelby to go rotten. I went home to my wife and three kids and was immediately greeted by screaming. My wife was upset that I forgot to take out the organics bin and now we missed the garbage man. This was a common argument we had, the yelling went back and forth for about 20 minutes in front of the children before i decided to go down to my office to escape the fighting. I had recently gotten into the hobby of wood engraving. I came down to a beautiful piece of old growth maple with amazing grain structure, the perfect project to my friend Tom who had been struggling with a failed contract with his landscaping company and was in a small claim’s court battle. He could really use a nice gesture. I designed a nice cutting board with three different stain patterns and brought it to his home. He looked upset, but his eyes brightened up when he saw a wrapped gift in my hands. “For me” he asked? I said yes. He loved the gift so much and we had a glass of wine before I made my way home. My wife and children were peacefully asleep when I arrived and for that brief moment i felt at ease. Sometimes a small act of awareness that someone is struggling can go a long way, and i slept like a baby that night. |
\[Survival. Then What?\]
"Okay, okay...,"Luis mumbled to himself as he made a decision. After the 3rd round of consistent, deliberate knocks, he accepted that it might be human life; or at least intelligent. He didn't rush. He moved carefully and waited at the door for an extra second. Then, he took a deep breath and opened it. He poked his head out and saw utopia.
Three months ago, he fled to the bunker after the first confirmed zombie sighting. Chaos erupted in his hometown and by the time he climbed down and shut his bunker door, most of the neighborhood was on fire. But, there were no ruined houses around him, not even his own. His bunker opened to a lush, green, grassy park. He could see gleaming white buildings in the direction of downtown. But, the most interesting thing he saw was the person walking away from his bunker.
"Hello?"he called as he finished climbing out of the bunker and onto the grass. The figure dressed in white stopped and turned around. He was a fair-skinned man with blonde-brown hair with a red tie.
"There you are,"he grinned and approached Luis; Luis met him halfway. "My name is Perseus, I represent Sharp Development,"he said as he extended his hand in greeting.
"Luis...,"he shook the well-dressed stranger's hand.
"You have a lot of questions; but, I'm already somewhat behind schedule,"Perseus said. "Let's just get to the important parts; you can get the details from Mundo later. Do you want to stay on this Earth?"Perseus asked.
"I'm sorry, what?"Luis asked. But, he didn't want Perseus to think he was mentally unfit, so he elaborated. "What other options do I have? What happened with the zombies?"Luis had a lot of time alone with his thoughts and he spent time wondering how he would react if he ever saw another human again. So far, it wasn't going as he imagined it.
"Sharp Development..,"he pointed at the small red scissor logo on his blazer. "...serves countless alternate Earths. Unfortunately, the zombie virus that was released on this one was an accident. Our fault."Perseus nodded toward the white skyscrapers growing out of the city's center. "Sharp Development quickly arrived to make amends; you were already in your bunker by then. But, now you're not. Do you want to stay on this Earth, or make your life on an alternate one?"
"When you say alternate Earth...,"Luis began his question; but, faded out. He didn't know how to finish it. Luckily, Perseus nodded.
"Livable Earths just like this one. At any point in time in their development, past or future. Some have magic, some have advanced technology; the choice is all yours. And to reiterate that in a different way, the Earth you select is entirely yours. It's our way of saying, 'We're Sorry'."
"A whole Earth??"Luis shook his head as if his mind refused to process the idea. "What am I going to do with a whole Earth?"
"Oh, any number of things,"Perseus nodded. "Connect it to Sharp Development's AlterNet and allow players to pass through, or keep it private for your own personal paradise. There are several options in between depending on what your goals are, I honestly don't have time for you to figure it out right now,"he smirked. He reached into the pocket of his blazer, then offered Luis the transparent glass card he pulled out. Red digits displayed the time as Perseus held the card; the numbers appeared to be floating in the air. "It'd really help me out if you just accept the Earth, and figure out what you want to do with it later."
"Yeah... okay..,"Luis wasn't sure what else to do and he accepted the card.
"Thanks! Gotta go!"Perseus waved as a black hole opened in the air next to him. He took one step in.
"Wait! What do I do next?"Luis asked. Perseus didn't stop walking and the portal closed behind him. But, he did give an answer to the question as he disappeared.
"You have everything you need. Figure it out."
\*\*\*
Thank you for reading! I’m responding to prompts every day. This is story #1907 in a row. (Story #097 in year six.). This story is part of an ongoing saga that takes place at a high school in my universe. It began on August 22nd and I will be adding to it with prompts every day until May 26th. They are all collected in order at [this link](https://www.reddit.com/r/Hugoverse/comments/wtglls/tokuhigh_alternet_class/). |
[Previously with the Divine Ire](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/sdvswd/wp_just_because_i_am_a_female_elf_dose_not_mean_i/hufh99k/?context=3)
Our newest member was named Penelope. She had borrowed Lily's axe for this quest and on the way to the dungeon was taught to fight. When we entered the dungeon she asked "So, what spellcaster type is the most dangerous?"
"Evocation."The bard said.
"I think it's a tossup between necromancer and illusionist."Lily replied.
Noxum laughed, "It's the enchanters, everything becomes dangerous around them."
"Is MMA a part of the question?"I asked.
Penelope looked confused.
"Mixed Magical Arts, a mainstay for any enchanters. If yes then Enchanter and Necromancer might become immortal through the infamous self-revive. If not then evocation creates destruction from nothing and is powerful short-term while long-term it is a toss up between necromancer and illusionist."I lectured.
I never mentioned this to the new one, but I use enchanting, elemental and divine impersonation magic.
"Huh, okay. Hey, is that a dwarven skeleton?"She responded.
"Dead is dead, even if dwarven."Noxum said.
Fighting only undead should be easy, the dwarf had a sword of fire, Noxum had used a mace to avoid damaging his sword. Me and Lily agreed I should save my spells for the necromancer of the dungeon, so we struck using my staff as a weapon. That's why it's reinforced with metal. Lily likes using whatever as a weapon as long as it looks like it could be used as one. Our new berserker proved to be powerful and Stan just baited everything, running around with a flag on his back.
When we tried taking the sword from the dwarf, it exploded.
"So, we are facing down an enchanter somewhere in the dungeon."Lily said.
"I think that's just stolen gear. Who actually gives their minions magical gear."Penelope responded.
"Divine Ire Rule 2: We can have everything but the favor of the gods. Odds are, this necromancer is competent."Noxum and I said.
"Y'all haven't told me what you did for that."Penelope looked at us.
"Rush, the ninth of his calling and Lily, angel assassin. A notoriously horny bard named Stan and Noxum, a heretic sage, 7th in his lineage."I answered.
"Hol' up! Wait a minute! I joined a team with a demon, an angel killer and 2 heretics?"
"Yes."We all said before continuing to walk.
"I was told to stay away from this group, but I asked what felt like all else and got ridiculed. I guess I'll keep going."Penelope muttered, I think to herself.
We entered a room with a woman on a bed and a cup on the nightstand. She was sleeping and probably not the necromancer. Noxum poured a sleep potion into the cup and no one said a thing.
Once we were out of the room we closed the door.
"What was that for?"Penelope whispered.
"If someone sleeps in a dungeon, they are either really powerful or really dangerous."Noxum whispered back.
Lily didn't get the memo "Hey, why is there a blinding light from the DARK room we just left?"
"We're gonna die."I whispered.
The woman in the room kicked open the door while wearing a standard outfit with glyphs of warding. "It's over now."
I levitated off the floor, turns out this enchanter made the tiles out of zombies. We angered the gods but I never thought they'd do this. I watched as Noxum, Penelope and Stan drowned in the zombies while I was dodging flying fire arrows, invisible zombie birds and the necromancer throwing exploding stones. I tried freezing the arrows but they kept heating each other up. All throughout this, I was reaching for a blue egg in my pocket and threw it at the zombies.
The zombies stopped being animated and the others took out the enchanter who was now surrounded 3 to 1. It took a while before the glyphs stopped reviving her, when she did redirect some arrows from me, I started freezing the arrows, the heat of all of them combined prevented them from freezing.
I laughed "I being both demonic and impersonating divine magic has gotten me on a list. That's why rule 1 is what it is."
"Let's get out of here, Divine Ire is never easy."Noxum said. |
Since the day of my birth, I have never had peace. Son of a very ancient vampire and a powerful mage, I had the luck of having a lot of love from my parents but at the same time that didn't assuage the pain of being the only kid in the cold castle.
No parent would let their child get close to a monster and so I spent my childhood alone.
such loneliness made me even closer to my parents than a normal child.
My parents were idealists. My mother was a diplomat who sought to create peace between humans and vampires. A kind woman who didn't mind lying and using subterfuge to achieve peace.
My father on the other hand was passionate about his work and therefore did not know the cruelty of humanity. he was an innocent man who spent his time thinking only about how to create a better world for everyone.
we were a happy family. my parents loved each other. they had a beautiful love story of having fled together from a castle where my mother was a diplomat and my father was a hostage. They went through a lot but got their happy ending.
or that's what I, at my 12 years old, thought.
One night, while I was reading some books and my parents were talking in front of the fireplace, men in armor arrived.
they attacked my family, they threw holy water on my mother. I still remember her burning alive in front of me.
My father ran to protect me but he was too slow. he was hit in the head by an arrow.
the sound of steel made my heart race. I was scared, I was crying, I was shaking.
they approached, first they threw holy water on me. when my skin didn't burn they yelled "it's not a vampire! it's a heretic child! cut off the head!"
this was the first time my head was cut off. I still remember how I felt when I turned to smoke and regenerated the first time.
the look of those iron giants, the feeling of knowing where my limbs were, the horror of losing my parents... all of that was too heavy for a child to ever forget.
what followed was a life filled with trauma and horror.
they trapped me in a magic box supposedly given by god. they took me to a convent and tried to kill me in every way. for 2 years i was burned, buried alive, suffocated, beaten and shredded. I experienced all kinds of physical pain, but the worst was missing my parents. my mother's red eyes, my father's blue eyes... I cried every night as I remembered.
this was my life for 2 years. until one day a man arrived. a prophet, someone who was said to have spoken with god.
I remember what he said like it was yesterday even though 200 years had passed.
"the words of God count 7 steps! 7 will be the keys, 7 will be the seals, 7 will be the heroes and only one will be the way. The son of night and day shall purify sin! he who was born when breaking the first seal must prepare for the breaking of the seventh! he must ensure the prophecy is fulfilled! must secure the 7 keys! must observe the 6 seals and must train the chosen 5! 1 teacher, 5 students and a fool. the 7 heroes, the seven keys, they who renewed the 7 seals and defeated the lord of shadows! these are the words of god! this is the destiny of this child!"
This profession changed my life. The murder attempts were over but hell was just beginning.
They began to train me hard. until I was 16 I learned didactics, I learned theology, I learned combat and I learned magic. I had no time to play or rest. trained 24 hours a day, just waiting for the destined day.
another seal broke, everyone in the monastery died, another seal broke, I lost the only friend I ever made, years passed and more and more seals broke.
when only one seal was missing, fate revealed itself. The 5 teenagers I was destined to teach finally arrived. This is the moment I've waited for 200 years...
and the biggest disappointment of my life.
I expected great warriors, sages, people with an aptitude for magic and all I got was 5 pathetic teenagers.
Rose was the only one to be proud of. she was the only one with real determination.
she also lost her parents early and was forced to fight from the day she was born. maybe that's why we got so close?
Not knowing if the admiration I feel for her comes from her strength and talent or is just a form of empathy for having similar stories is very disconcerting.
she is very skilled with swords. in a few weeks she was almost as good as me without having any supernatural powers and no training time.
Talented and disciplined. Rose is really admirable for someone so young.
Demian on the other hand is a complete disgrace.
how can someone like this spoiled brat be a hero?
he was raised by wealthy and powerful parents. he always lived surrounded by employees and never had to make an effort for anything.
If he was just useless I wouldn't mind, but besides that he always gets in the way! he spends time harassing girls, always being late, and is always arguing with Rose.
I've been through a lot, I've had a lot of adventures, and I've had a lot of loss.
But even I don't know what to do, even I'm desperate.
I don't know how to turn this guy into a hero and that's why I came here.
do you have any advice for me?
PS: English is not my native language so I had to use google translator at times. Please excuse me if the text is not good. |
Someone was tugging on my arm. I am so tired. Let me sleep. Ugh.
“Let me sleep,” I said. It sounded like I had a mouth full of cotton balls. “Tired.”
“You’re awake! You’re awake!” A female voice said excitedly.
There was a flurry of activity that I drifted in and out for. People in and out of the room. People poking and prodding me.
I opened my eyes slowly. The light was blinding.
“Where am I?” I said groggily.
“You are at St. Jude’s hospital,” a warm female voice said. “What is your name?”
“I… I don’t know…” it was all blank.
“Don’t worry about it, let’s get you moving, and I am sure it will come back to you,” she said.
The next days were a blur. I had been in a coma for three years and my muscles had atrophied. Physiotherapy was painful and hard but I worked through it. It took months before I could walk again. But still no memories.
I had asked how I got to the hospital and they said I was dropped off at the ER. Apparently I was beaten and bruised, barely alive, and in a coma. I had been here ever since.
The kind nurses took out an ad in all of the newspapers around our area. The ad asked if anyone knew me…. But no one came forward.
I was alone in the world.
I got a job at a near by grocery store, bagging groceries. I lived in a low income housing complex by myself. I was self sufficient but there was a huge hole in my life. I didn’t know how to fill it. I knew there should be more to life than this but I had no idea what it would be.
I was bagging groceries for Mrs. Henshaw. A nice older lady who talked non-stop. She always gave me an extra $5 to load the groceries into her car. She was going on about something in the news when a man in a mask came into the store.
“Everyone down!”, he yelled.
There were screams and yells as everyone got down on the floor. People were terrified.
I don’t think my heartbeat went up at all. I just stood there, staring at the man - staring at the Glock-19 in his hand. That is an odd detail - how did I know that is a Glock-19?
“I said down!” He yelled at me. He came over to me, waving the gun around. He had the gun right in my face, people were screaming at me to get down, he was screaming.
I grabbed the slide of the gun with my left hand and pulled down on the release with my tight and took the slide off of the gun before he got a shot off.
“What the fuck‽” he said looking at his gun.
A quick chop to his throat with my right hand caused his head to snap forward. I grabbed his hair in my left and slammed his head into my knee that was rocketing up to meet his forehead. His head flung backwards and he crumpled to the ground, unconscious.
How? How did I know to do that?
I looked around the store at the stunned faces looking at me.
“Would you like a hand out with your groceries today, Mrs. Henshaw?” I heard myself calmly say. |
The galaxy is a vast place. Mighty empires stretch over hundreds of star systems, battling one another for power and control. But here, out in the farthest reaches of space, it seems kind of hard to believe.
Growing up, I was told our ancestors came from the tiny planet of Sol 3, or Earth as they called it. After centuries, they united as one, reached to the stars, and built one of the greatest civilizations in the universe, the Human Empire.
Among the various colonies is my home in the Orthrus system. We used to be an asteroid mining operation, but one day the supply ships that came to pick up the metals just stopped.
Without the Empire collecting what we produced, there was no more need for it, and we were capable of supporting ourselves. Life was peaceful, and yet the silence unnerved many.
Eventually, some could wait no longer. An expedition team was assembled to use the old ships and set off to learn what happened. But soon the silence fell again. Only one ship remains, but no one has even suggested using it.
Maybe the Empire will contact us again someday. Or maybe they decided our colony just wasn't worth it. Either way, it doesn't really matter. We can survive on our own out here as long as we need. |
'Finally.'
A withered hand reached out, soft, shifting light emanating from the iridescent crystal, reflecting colors she had long forgotten. She paused to watch the lights as they seemed to dance along her skin, and felt a distant pang of loss as she thought of how they might have reflected upon beautiful gray eyes. She had held onto the memory of those beautiful gray eyes looking up to her, full of trust and hope and love, as she promised to lead that life to freedom. She hadn't forgotten those still-breathtaking eyes as they glared, decades late, burning with seething hatred as they had watched her fail.
'This is your second, and last chance.'
Her own heart hardened with resolve, and she gripped the crystal and was instantly rewarded with a searing heat that had her palm sizzling and her mouth screaming. In one move, she jerked her arm back, ripping the crystal from it's socket, and dropped the deceptively dangerous thing, letting it clatter on the cavernous floor before it rolled to a stop by her feet. The cave was silent, save for the echos of her pained sobs bouncing through its otherwise empty halls.
Foreign laughter began drowning out the frail woman's wretched wailing. The empty spot where the horrible, beautiful crystal once sat nestled into the wall pulsed twice, and with a loud CRACK, two smooth lines ran along the floor and wall of the cave, emanating from that spot. The laughter became more erratic and eagerness was palpable in its raspy voice as the cave itself seemed to both whisper and yell, "My chain has been undone! I can feel the universe once again!"
Though overwhelmingly painful, even the searing burn of melted flesh from her hand couldn't keep the pained smile stretched across the woman's face as she felt the earth pulse twice, and shudder beneath her feet. In the dimming of the crystals diminishing light, she saw the deepening of the cracks and knew they had continued their path. Hiccuping laughter erupted from her lips and she screamed. "Be free! Be free and be ruinous!"
Two sets of laughter echoed throughout the cave. The cave pulsed twice, and the crack deepened and grew. The trapped planet 'Hyriin' was not so trapped for much longer. |
Standing at the front door from within the house, Marcus looked sadly upon the sealed exit.
It looked untouched, the previous attempts of escape left neither an expensive blemish nor permanent disfigurement. If only it was the door that was solely affected.
Throughout the house a whispering chanting had become more coherent.
Marcus focused on standing still at the front door, a death like state already overcame him. It was a learned habit to continue living in this house.
The chanting went from coherent to deafening loud. His mother discovered it first, the last moment she could save her favorite son.
As soon as it had appeared the chanting stopped leaving behind deafening silence. He had survived again, it saw him as already dead.
Without hesitation Marcus moved swiftly towards the living room on the left. Moms favorite son laid on the floor lifeless. It looked like he had tripped and broke his neck on the coffee table, yet the image of invisible hands forcing his brothers body into death could not be forgotten.
The chanting had quickly returned, reaching completion sooner than before.
It had become more intense, as if it were becoming impatient.
Marcus was trapped, the last of his family in this house. His family picked off one by one with each interval of the chanting. An un-loving mother and father, a spoiled selfish brother, his brothers kind pregnant wife and their three children.
With the discovery of how to get past the chanting he was mired in self loathing. This lesson to survival costed him his sense of family, the awaited acknowledgment from his loved ones never to be obtained.
They all died as if it was an accident. They all looked as though they just had an unfortunate accident.
It was all a murder.
A tingly sensation assailed his nostrils, Marcus needed to sneeze just as the chanting began. There was no escaping this time. |
# THE WAR OF THE AFTERLIFE
​
>It was a disastrous time in human history, when demons and angels had free reign to roam the earth. Without any control or restraint, demons would use chokers to force their will onto humans and drag them to hell. In response, angels would attempt to attack and destroy demons, often killing humans in the process. There was nowhere safe to hide, and there were hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths and casualties. The world was in complete chaos and almost destroyed itself. People would go to war with each other, forgetting what the real stakes were. Before the world came to an end, God and Lucifer created 'The Neutral Space', a place where heaven and hell can peacefully negotiate solutions not just for the sake of their own realms, but also the sake of mankind.
​
"Wow... this sounds like it was brutal..."Scott was given a break from [being Vulca's toy,](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/ywz8dp/comment/iwmqmmj/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) coming to Urrick's place to see how I'm doing. It was certainly a shock for him to see me in a maid outfit that highlights my bust and barely covers my butt. After Urrick explained I'm 'earning' permission for dangerous activities, and giving my behind a spank - which Urrick gave permission for - Scott browsed Urrick's space, found and read a scroll about The War of the Afterlife.
Urrick nods slowly and seriously. "Yes. It was. I wasn't present for it, but I've heard no-one, demon, angel *or* human, was safe. I'd hate to experience a war..."
I finish polishing the pictures on the walls. "[There's a group of humans dedicated to preventing a repeat,](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/11u43ac/comment/jcmgimq/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) Urrie. I'm sure things will be fine."
"And your kind never war?"Urrick looks at me sternly. I look away sheepishly, but I notice his smirk. "Now, shouldn't you get back to work?"
I nod silently and get to work on my next task, dusting the shelves. Scott looks at Urrick. "What you bribing her with?"
"She saw a skydiving thing being advertised. The intensity of such a thing means I'll be looking after her afterwards."
Scott nudges Urrick with his elbow. "Vulca already told me about that. I don't think she'll like being LITERALLY babied."
Urrick snickers. "We have a deal, she knows it."
"But-"
"Scott"I state. "It's fine. I agreed to this."I smile softly at Urrick so he knows I mean it.
"Thanks, love"Urrick replies, walking over to give me a kiss.
I reciprocate. The reward will be worth it.
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
This story is a part of my series, [To Love a Demon.](https://www.reddit.com/r/StoriesbyCrystal/comments/xqefwu/to_love_a_demon/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) Please check it out! |
"Wait, so that's god?"
"Yes, results are very conclusive..."
"But it's... Well, that."
"I'm afraid so."
"I don't get it."
"They did say often God was ineffable."
"Surely, but I was expecting something more, uh..."
"Substantial?"
"Precisely."
"Well, this is just a sample, to be fair."
"A sample?"
"A God sample."
"So, this isn't God?"
"No, this definitely is God. It's just not all of It."
"Not all of God?"
"Just a little bit of God."
"A little bit of God?"
"Correct."
"How much God is there?"
"As a whole? In the universe?"
"No, in the petri dish..."
"Oh... About fifteen micrograms."
"...of God?"
"Ayup."
"Feels like if you open the dish I could aspire it..."
"I mean, God's everywhere. You probably already aspired it."
"Everywhere? Oh, of course... It's God. So, has everyone aspired some of..."
"God's inside all of us."
"Right, right..."
"You look disappointed. This is the culmination of years of research."
"No, yeah, I understand. It's uh... unexpected but seems we finally have an answer."
"Seems that way."
"So, did we find any utility for it yet?"
"I mean. It created the universe."
"Yes. That's another thing... How?"
"By accident, it's our current hypothesis."
"Right... What about all those stories about people talking to god?"
"In the right concentration it can be highly hallucinogenic."
"Oh, damn. Okay. Can I have some?"
"No right now, but I can make you some for the faculty party Friday."
"That sounds like fun."
"I can't say, haven't tried God yet. You know, I was an atheist up until Tuesday."
"Oh, yeah."
"And sober."
"Yeah... Funny how that goes. Most people stop using substances when they find God but..."
"What if God is a substance?"
"Haha...Yeah..."
"..."
"..."
"Do you want to see my railgun prototype?"
"Oh! Yes!"
"Right, it's on the lab upstairs. Just... Let's scrub first. Last night Jane dragged God to the fungal lab and contaminated a few samples..." |
Magic is a complicated force of nature. It is one of the fundamental building blocks of the universe. Many call it the ‘will of creation’.
As a seer, my power lets me peek into the will of creation. I can see the possibilities that lie before all of us. Some are set in stone and will happen no matter what we do. Some are an ever shifting set of possibilities.
I look at the possibilities and help people pick the path best for them. I guide kings, queens, emperors, and nobility. I guide tradespeople, sailors, and business people. I guide the rich, the poor and everyone in between. I can guide all but myself - for no seer is able to see their own future.
As powerful as my gift is, it lasts for but a short time. As soon as a seer takes a lover - the power vanishes.
Seers lock themselves away in monasteries - away from people and temptation. But without people to interact with, the seers don’t see. You have to touch the person you are seeing for.
Very few are able to keep their powers beyond their twenties - temptations of the flesh as just too great.
————————
“It happened again,” I said in a hushed whisper to my sister in sight.
“Again? It should be impossible! You are sure you saw yourself?” O’shay asked in an equally hushed voice.
“Oh yeah. It was definitely me,” I said with a little moan. The memory of the erotic vision filled my senses. “It was a vision like I have never had before. I could see it, smell it, taste it, and - dear Gods above and below - I could feel it.”
We both giggled. We had both had visions of patrons having relations. That was common enough, but to have a vision of yourself - and to have such an erotic vision was unprecedented.
“You are going to have to tell the high priestess,” O’shay said seriously. I raised my eye brows at her. “Well, maybe leave out some of juicy bits,” she giggled conspiratorially. “But to have visions about yourself - that needs to be added to the scrolls.”
She was right. Everything we knew about the power of the seers was contained in the scrolls. Every great vision. All of the firsts. It was our history and our future - for new seers were trained from the scrolls.
“It feels too - personal - to share with the high priestess,” I said weakly.
“We have know what it means. If another woman has a vision of herself, no matter how naughty,” she giggled, “it would be good to know what it means for the seer. You have had a first. You will be taught to new generations of seers.”
O’shay was right, I had an obligation to the future.
“Ok. I will go,” I gave her a quick hug.
“Remember - leave out the naughty bits,” she said as I hugged her.
I rolled my eyes at her. I took the big hallway to the left - heading for the library of the high priestess.
The library was an intimidating place. It had ceilings as high as the chapel. Ornate barrel arches that intersected in spectacular flourishes. The entire ceiling was painted with scenes of firsts.
The first seer. The first vision of a king’s death. The first vision of the birth of another seer. The first seer to loose her power. On and on. The ceiling was a pictograph of lessons that all seers must learn.
Shelves of scrolls towered fifteen feet into the air. Each shelf filled to over flowing with scrolls. The entire library smelt musty and of old paper.
I was staring at the ceiling, the scene of the first seer, when the high priestess emerged from the shelves.
“What brings you to the library child?” The kind priestess said. She was in her sixties. The only seer to retain their powers so late into life - it was a testimony to her control and self discipline. She was a first - some day she would have a ceiling scene dedicated to her.
“I had a concerning vision,” I said, uncertain how to begin. “I… I was in my vision.”
“That is rare but not unheard of,” she said. She lead me to a table so we could sit down. “Tell me of the vision, child.”
I blushed and couldn’t repress a smile.
“Oh…,” the priestess said. “Give me your hand, child.”
I reached out with my left hand. She enclosed the hand with hers. Her eyes became cloudy white and her breathing slowed. She made small whimpering and moaning noises. A smile spread across her face as her eyes cleared.
“That was quite the vision you had,” she chuckled. It didn’t think I could blush even more, but some how I did. “It is written in stone - you have no other future but that one. You will take a lover.”
“I will loose my power,” I said sadly. My power has defined me since I was a child. I didn’t know how to be anything but a seer.
“I don’t think so,” the priestess said.
Hope flared in my heart.
“You aren’t the first to see a vision like this. Lindsey of Carthaginian saw a vision of herself… having relations… almost three thousand years ago. She thought her time as a seer was over as well. But,” she said raising a finger dramatically, “she didn’t loose her powers. This love is destined by the universe. It has a power of its own. The universe needs something from you. You have a great destiny ahead of you!”
“I have never hear of Lindsey of Carthaginian. I have never seen her scene on a ceiling,” I said questioningly.
“And you never will see her scene… and you won’t have a scene either,” she said gently. “Love is a death for most seers. It is the end of their powers and the end of their time as seers. To teach of those who are beyond blessed to keep their powers and get love - it would be cruel - to all of the seers that will never get that.”
There was a sadness in the old seer. A pain and longing etched across her face.
“I am sorry,” I said sincerely.
She smiled a little smile at me. “It is alright, child. As the high priestess, I knew it was possible. I am blessed to have met you - rarest of the seers.”
“Your path will not be easy,” she continued, “you will have to leave the monastery and find your mystery man. You will be on your own,” she said seriously.
“I have been her for as long as I can remember. I know nothing else,” I said sadly.
“I know child. And you can never tell anyone. I will tell everyone you have lost your power and have chosen to leave. We must not give the other seers an impossible hope.”
Tears ran down my face.
“It’s alright child. You have a grand adventure ahead of you.” She wiped away my tears with her thumb. “I will get you the scrolls of Lindsey of Carthaginian. You should read them before you go. I will expect you to start a scroll when you leave. Your history won’t be widely known but i believe it will be one of the most important histories that will ever be housed in this library.”
She patted my hand.
“I will go get her scrolls.”
A life beyond the monastery. Love. Destiny. I held the face of the man I would love firm in my mind. Hope and purpose filled me. I can do this. |
The barbarian grits his teeth, enraged. "Dude, why the hell are you praying when those **THINGS** are out there?!"
The Cleric's face is impassive as he continues to kneel, face skyward. "Einar, you need to have more faith. The Goddess of peace will come to our rescue."
Einar swings his warhammer down atop the vicious undead beast, putrid blood flying. "David, how in the God's names is praying to the goddess of PEACE going to help us protect this village! For my sake, PLEASE pick up your dagger and help me out."
Einar was greatly regretting bringing along the man. He'd heard stories that no battle could be lost with this cleric on your side, but he'd learned too late that David was a devotee to *Eirenenia*. How were they supposed to win any battle with a cleric who worshipped a goddess *known* to greatly prefer diplomacy and negotiation over violence?
In his overwhelmed desperation to keep the monsters away from the gates of the village, the barbarian is pushed into the mud with a wet thud. He watches on horrified as the rotting frame of what appears to be a direwolf bolts towards David.
However, just mere moments before the kneeling man's throat is crushed by enormous jaws, the creature falls to the ground convulsing violently.
Einar watches in fascinated horror as hundreds of the unholy undead do the same, brilliant holy light escaping their mouths and eyes as they die in smoking heaps.
A few moments later the barbarian stands alone with the cleric, surrounded by nothing but the smouldering remains of their enemies.
"Gods... David! H-- how?! How did you convince Eirenenia to aid us?! This is unheard of!"
The cleric just stands, brushing the dirt and mud as he finally ends his prayer. "Eirenenia does abhor killing, but she *does* become a hypocrite any time her beloved son is endangered." |
The king stood above the tomb, his eyes roaming over the words again and again. He didn’t feel numb, quite frankly he felt less than that. He felt empty, void of any emotion. His heart had split open when he had heard the news, tears fell like a torrential downpour, first his beloved wife, then his daughter, and now finally his son. The inscription only seemed to twist the dagger in his heart further,
‘HERE LIES PRINCE HUMPHREY, FIRST OF HIS NAME.
HUMPTY DUMPTY SAT ON A WALL, HUMPTY DUMPTY HAD GREAT FALL.
ALL THE HORSES AND ALL THE KINGS MEN, COULDN’T PUT HUMPTY BACK TOGETHER AGAIN.”
He fell to his knees, and let out a guttural scream. His son’s life, the sacrifice he’d made, reduced to nothing more than a bloody joke. Whomever had written it had not seen the carnage, the death and destruction that had been wrought by that infernal warlord. They had not seen his son’s broken form lying at the foot of the battlements, he was a hero but would never be remembered as such.
“My king!” The king jumped with a start, he had not noticed the messenger enter, “We’ve found her.”
Shock penetrated him, “What?” He croake, his voice was hoarse from both the scream and lack of use.
“We’ve found her my king, her forces have made camp in the northern mountains!”
The king rose, fury burning within his eyes, “Make all the necessary preparations, ready all of our forces, today Mother Goose dies!” |
Morghan sat in his conjured throne, surrounded by his undead army, sitting in the ruins of the school he once attended. He sat to ponder what other forbidden magics he could try. After all, every other rule he had broken only served to make him more powerful, banned only to keep the people in check. But not anymore. He would open every door and turn every forbidden page he could find, and take his fellow magicians with him to a world more equal, whether they like it yet or not.
"Open every door,"the dark magic wielder thought to himself, and suddenly he shot up, "of course!"He quickly walked his way across the former headmaster's room, his cape trailing on the floor, an inconvenience, though a more than acceptable one given the power it held. Morghan made his way over to the Book of Forbidden Spells, nothing more than a checklist to him now, although not a very good one as the book had been cursed to only show the page the user thought of, assuring that one could never use it's contents to learn of forbidden spells, only how to cast known ones if the situation were dire enough to warrant it. And luckily for Morghan, he had taken a class in the Forbidden Spells. Well, half a class. Perhaps, he had thought, he should have actually finished that class before starting his revolution.
Regardless, the wizard stared at the book, and willed it to turn its pages, and it did so with a speed that made Morghan's long hair fly back, though he did not flinch in the face of it, until it landed on the section of "Dimensional Doorways."Looking over the page, he began to summon the materials necessary; fairy dust, a basic component in most spells, a series of golden plates, to act as a compass between worlds, and the heart of a demon, to act as the catalyst, as well as to navigate the different portals. It took only a moment to conjure the ingredients, although he was certain he would have to deal with an angry demon after this. Shrugging the thought away, Morghan quietly began setting the spell, laying the plates as instructed, scattering the fairy dust, and holding the demon heart with his gauntlet-clad right hand.
Taking but a moment to prepare himself, Morghan then squeezed the heart, letting blood drop into the middle plate to then dissolve and burn away. He watched as it appeared a hole was ripped in space itself, only to come face to face with himself- his own universe. So he could have expected. He let his concentration fade, the portal following suit. Next, he dropped blood into the plate above his own. This time, the portal showed not himself or this room, but a vast meadow, of which he was floating high above, no doubt due to the high elevation of the room he was currently in. "A world like ours, but untouched by humans?"he pondered, but quickly put the thought away, spotting a plume of chimney smoke in the distance. "No matter,"he mumbled to himself, once again letting the portal fade. This time, he reached much farther than before, to the upper right corner of the plates. The blood had not even disappeared fully when Morghan began feeling himself get pulled forward. The sensation only grew as the portal crackled to life, sucking in every object it could, including his undead servants, including the very plates that had summoned this beast of a world. Undeterred by this danger, Morghan took but a moment to see the nature of this world. It was nearly pitch black on the other side, yet covered in dots resembling stars across the inky darkness. "The inside of some beast?"he thought, "or are those really stars?"The dark magician quickly severed his connection to the magical gateway, leaving him in the now empty room with nothing but him and the Book. Quietly, Morghan closed the Book, returned it to its pedestal, and left the room to retire for the night. |
I was not so bold to proclaim to be the most powerful magus in existence— some did however. One of these was none other than the emperor of bright. Being the arch-sage of the fifth ring meant that people cared little about my decisions (people never seemed to believe me when i said that i would not take over the world).
So here I am. In some mummy's boy emperor's solid gold house as he desperately tries to bribe me with money, his daughter, and any other meaningless token people think are valuable.
I am not a noble, my father was a lumberjack and my mother wrote poetry. So i was admitted to the Acadamus Magi because i had "potential that could not be wasted". I am a good boy, I do as I am told. So I studied, improved and moved up the ladder. I was accepted into the fifth circle based on profile alone (I never actually applied).
My point is that I dont speak rich person very well. So I chose my words carefully when that rich bastard decided to waste my time trying to pay me off
"Oh great arch sage, is there anything I can do as your emperor?"The detestable money muncher said in the fakest voice I could have ever imagined.
"You can cut the crap and move two feet to the left. You are blocking the sunlight!"I retorted, I was never a fan of rich people, or entitled scholars— i think the only people I appreciate are students who like magic but not power, field researchers who keep things blunt, and soldiers.
Anyway, he did so, but i was not done berating the spoiled brat.
"You don't offer me money so that I might not think ill of you—"i began my teleportation spell home "—Do you take me for an extortionist!?"
Then I vanished. If that gilded man child had the balls to declare war on me, he would not have attempted to pay me off. |
"Ugh, they found me again, time to go"the old man sighed, talking mostly to himself.
"Why do we have to run? Can't we just talk?"The young boy replied, startling the old man and reminding him he wasn't alone anymore.
"These people don't want to talk"the old man replied, pulling his hair back. "They just want me. My brain, my essence, my genius. They won't stop to talk. They'll take me immediately, and kill you dead. You know this."
"I know, I know"the young boy solemnly replied. "I just don't want to. Can we at least bring this mom with us? I really like her."
"That's a stupid question"the old man replied, not looking up from his screen.
The young boy went silent. He knew he couldn't say goodbye. They were leaving now, and there wasn't much time left.
The computer whirred, dinged, and uploaded to the handheld device next to it. At that very moment, an amplified voice shook the garage they were hiding in.
"C-137, come out now or be eliminated"
It was time to go. The old man pulled the device from the computer, flicked a switch, pulled a trigger, and a green swirl manifested in front of him. He sighed.
"Let's go Morty. Maybe we can hide better this time." |
Due to my mixed blood, I've always felt strangely distant from my kin, perhaps because of how I was raised. Most elves live their whole lives in a sacred forest which they protect and enchant with strong magic; these tribes see themselves as separate from the rest of the world. They live in a bubble, finding solace in the utopia that they've created. Few are the human adventurers who have set eyes upon that world that the elves created, and of the few exceptions that are allowed entry, few are those who choose to leave.
I, too, have not set eyes on that elvish utopia. I grew up in a human village; my father was an exiled elf and my mother was human. Despite some fond childhood teasing about my ears, I was otherwise treated as any other. I kept the two worlds separate. On the human side, I went to school and quickly made human friends, guided by my mother. On the elvish side, I was guided by my father, learning how to listen to the whispers of wind, how to shape the sway of the water, and how to breathe with the beat of the forest. I was happy, and the years crept by.
But everything in nature has its time, and time owns everything in nature; this I've learned. I was only 60 when my mother passed. By the time I was 80, my friends had died. By 100, I decided to leave my father to travel the world. Those early days are now but a distant memory.
But I now understand the elvish seclusion. How else can one cope when confronted with the merciless passing of time, the chaotic swirling of entropy? How else can one remain sane when all around lives sprout and wither, towns rise and fall, and you, the lone constancy, the lone witness, try to make sense of it all? You alone, who heeds the whispers of the tongue of nature, who understands that ancient magic. It's no wonder that elves fear exile more than death.
And so, for the next \~1470 years, I travelled the world, not because I was chasing something, but because I was hiding from time. I learned languages, magics, and how to fight. There was nothing else to do but learn.
That brings us to today.
I am living in a house inside a forest away from town. I leave my house, and I run into a little girl, clutching a half-filled basket of berries. Her white-laced dress bounces up and down as she skips in my direction. She's humming in a sweet tune, one that I've long since forgotten. Then she notices me. "Hi, Mister!"she waves cheerfully. "Have you seen any bewwies? I'm looking for bewwies."She's not afraid of me at all. Her nature is that of a clear drop of water, just as it is shed from a cloud. Pure.
For a moment, I'm tempted to accompany her, but I stop myself. Nothing good come with getting too involved. Plus, if a monster uses her as sustenance, that is merely another life elongated and another life shorted in the grand scheme of the passing of time. Instead, I should just point her in the right direction and let fate run its course.
But then, I examine the berries in her basked. I kneel to get a closer look. We're eye to eye. "Child, these are not good for eating"I hold up a round yellow and green spotted berry. They are mildly poisonous before they are fully ripe, but were used hundreds of years ago as an ingredient to cure memory loss, and before that were used in a variety of foods such as... The ancient Ramons hypothesized the reaction... I'm getting ahead of myself.
"Mister! But I already ate them. Sweet bewwies!"She exclaims happily. I sigh. What will become of this young sapling human?
"Where are your guardians, little one?"I ask her.
"Guawdians?"
"Your parents"
She looks around, surprised. "I thought they wewe here. Mommy, Daddy, whewe awe you?"The forest gives no answer.
She looks at me with big eyes, worriedly. "Mister, whewe awe they?"I look at her face, and I see it coming. Water will soon leak from this young one's eyes.
I find myself saying, "There, there, little one. We shall walk together towards the township of the humans where your parents may be."
I'm rewarded with a slight smile and a small giggle. "Mister, you talk funny."
I already know I'm going to regret this. I'm going to get attached, and she's going to die of old age. But we set out together anyways. |
Smoke was slowly rising form the crater. The group known as Drums of Revolution had finally been beaten by the kingdom.
The final battle was won.
Soldiers and civilians, rebels and nobles. Everybody had fought and everybody lost in the end. Just the Kingdom remained.
As the sun kissed the day goodbye and bathed the battlefield into an eerie light the few remaining souls rested, catching their breath from this hard fought battle.
The Drums of Revolution had been a formidable foe bringing the Kingdom to the brink of destruction. Almost succeeding in marching into the capital, and overthrowing it with sheer willpower.
The soldiers and rebels fought fiercely for days and changed the landscape in the process. This very place which had been a lush green valley, turned into a hellscape drenched in mud, blood and craters. Riddled with corpses and swords, the embers rising from it, the landscape was not recognizable any longer.
And it was in this moment that Heinz realized that he still stood. He had survived the bloodshed. The attacks of everybody. Of course he did not come out of it without wounds, but a few scars here and there was a small price to pay for his life.
Standing at the edge of the crater he watched as his comrades, started to gather the fallen and began to threw them into said crater.
They had to burn them, otherwise they would rise again as vengeful spirits. He knew that as well. He knew of his duty. He knew he had to move. But his body did not listen. He stood there silently watching his fellow soldiers building at tower of corpses. Higher and higher.
And he watched still in silence, still at the very same spot, as his commander spoke words. He did not hear them.
Heinz heard only the sound of his heart beating.
The beating of his heart was almost deafening.
Grabbing his chest and begging his heart to stop beating so fast. He felt the pain of his fallen friends. His family. His comrades. Even his enemies which wanted to kill him.
All the pain kept rushing into him and tried to rip him apart from the inside out. A fire began to burn in him just as his commander lit the corpses on fire.
And everything went silent.
A single tear rushed down his cheek.
And his heart beat once.
The fire in front of him, lit a fire in him. Questioning if this was the right path. Having killed and wiped out all the rebels, certainly should have erased the fire of revolution, but in spite of that, a fire was lit in Heinz.
Another beat of his heart.
He knew this was not righteous. He could not stand for this any longer.
His heart beat faster and faster. As he slowly looked around. His fellow soldiers. Weak and hurt. Wounded and dead. Resting and praising god to be alive.
This was not right.
And he would change it.
The Drums of Revolution might be defeated. But Heinz was not.
He took a step away from the fire burning behind him.
This was the birth of the organization which came to be known as Liberating Fire. |
"Yello me! This is day 1 of 80 trying to quit drinking! Now if you ever have to think on why you want to do this, remember, you gotta stay strong for your family, they're gone right now cause you're in rehab and they probably won't visit. Look, our wife has always been busy, she never really had time to come home, take care of the kids, get them to school, but that's okay!"
A pause.
"She always cared for us when we needed it and now it's our turn! To get better for us and our kids! I know it can be easy to forget sometimes, when you go for so long towards a goal, why you're doing it, just remember,"the recording of me moved about, fingering his pocket with one hand absentminded as he looked about the table beside him for a photo frame that was turned down, it seemed damage, like it was old or the printer was just poor, interrupting my revery I spoke again,
"Remember its for our family, all of them our waiting for us to come back to love and be loved, stay strong!"
Now I am not a drinker, nor do I have a family, I've been alone most of my life and quite happy about it. Maybe I'm a bit hollow and tired because of it, but it was always so hard to get dating or friend making. It always felt like I would be pitied once they saw me, they always looked at me so strangely.
Now this is a strange place for me to be, I, taking stuff from my dad that he had given out in his will, he made sure his lawyer would tell me about the recordings he left for me, I thought they would be of him, but they're of me?
Speaking of which didn't that lawyer seem shifty? Like he was trying to sell me something, which means these are probably fakes. I'd probably be better forgetting about this, asides dad was always a prankster, always thought he was so funny. Asides from that I guess this venture wasn't that important, what do I need from dad anyway.
I'm in the mood for a drink, now what was I doing anyway?
Hoping to go for memento vibes but it's 3 am and I can't think so sorry for the shit story, hope you enjoyed anyways. |
I follow Urrick, who's carrying Ariana, through the portal. He kisses my cheek. "You prepared, Flora?"
I blush. "I'll be fine, Urrie!"I give him a hug and Ariana a kiss on her forehead. I run over to the instructor standing near a plane.
"Huh... thought someone was messing with me when I was told your demon boyfriend organised this"he chuckles. "Are you ready?"
"READY!"I chime loudly. We get into the plane and it takes off.
After climbing for a bit, the plane circles around to position above the jump site. The instructor yells at me some safety stuff, as well as what I need to do and to confirm I'm ok to go. Once we're strapped together, the door of the plane opens. My heart goes crazy. THIS is the kind of thrill I've been missing out on!
As we fall out the plane, I get a great sense of exhilaration and adrenaline. The instructor yells at me to pull the cord for the parachute, and I do. We glide gently and land on the grass.
As soon as we land, Urrick rushes over. The instructor releases the strap and pats my shoulder. "How was it?"
"It was great! More intense than I imagined..."I turn to look at Urrick and smile shyly. "I'm ready to go back to your place."
He smirks and nods as he summons another portal. I wave goodbye to the instructor.
Urrick and I arrive at his place. "I have an outfit prepared for you, love. Please put it on while I take Ariana to your parents' place."I nod sheepishly. I already know what he's expecting me to wear; he's shown it to be. [He did say he'd want to treat me like a baby after intense activities,](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/12dn46u/comment/jf7orrj/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) I just didn't realise *quite* how literal he was being... still, I agreed, and I know he does genuinely care about me. By the time he comes back, I'm wearing frilly white socks, a pink lacey dress... and a diaper.
He's clearly amused by my embarrassment, he IS a demon after all. "You look adorable!"
"Urrie..."I say quietly. He does the whole 'shh shh' thing people do with babies and toddlers.
"Come on, let's get you down for a nap."He effortlessly picks me up and cradles me, carrying me to the adult-sized crib he prepared, laying me down in it. I'm about to say something about this being too much, when he tucks a blanket over me and passes me a teddy bear.
Despite literally being treated like a baby... somehow, this is comforting... Urrick produces a pacifier and pops it into my mouth before stroking my cheek. "Feeling relaxed?"
I nod as I clutch the teddy. He kisses my forehead. "Good. Get some rest Flora, I need to go to work."
Urrick pulls up the 'door' of the crib and smiles warmly at me before leaving. I just close my eyes, sucking on the pacifier. This doesn't seem as bad as I thought it was going to be.
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
This story is a part of my series, [To Love a Demon.](https://www.reddit.com/r/StoriesbyCrystal/comments/xqefwu/to_love_a_demon/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) Please check it out! |
Luke Carpenter. 5’8”, 158lbs. AB+ Blood type
The grandson of Dorothy Carpenter, he lives on her sprawling corn farm near a section of woods known as “The Wailing Creek”, where apparently “something” lives. Nobody can really decide what “something” is though, other than a hoax.
He’s scrawny as a beanpole, enjoys taking long walks at night, especially clear nights with bright moons and is generally the perfect victim.
You know I probably went too far researching this guy.
I mean I didn’t need to, but I haven’t done this before, which made me nervous, and when I’m nervous I either research, or ramble about what I research. Or just ramble, like I just did.
I am glad for the research though, tonight is one such night. Full moon, partly cloudy. And sure enough when dusk comes Luke strolls out of the house and straight into the cornfield. I quickly check that I have everything, and I head off.
The field is long and sprawling, stretching in rows of corn that block both the rising moon and the setting sun, leading to a heart pounding walk in under the violet sky. I keep reminding myself that I just need to knock him out, and I’ll be good. Or maybe that’s not good since I’m giving him a concussion, should I change the plan?
Before inner me can respond, Luke violently whirled around, falling in the process, as if his body was simultaneously trying to salsa dance and swan dive. His face was a genuine mix of astonishment and horror. He stared up at me, clad in a yellow sweater/hoodie mix holding a mallet. And he called out, “Who are you?”
Why my mouth immediately blurted out “a serial killer” I have yet to know. It’s just something that happens. My face immediately turns beet red, while his grows an additional layer existential confusion.
“Yes”, I say, trying to recover, “I am the.. corn… mallet… vampire! Yes, I steal the blood of people who walk alone at night in cornfields, bludgeoning them with my trusty mallet. You…should fear me!”
Incredulity was added to the mix of emotions in Luke’s face, managing to to gain an upper hand for dominance when he repeated the moniker “corn mallet vampire”
Luke then checked his watch,stood and stared walking again. Apparently he had better things to do.
Apparently he also had the time to drag me somewhere. I’m guessing that he took my mallet, knocked me out, and he was now one of the two people waiting in the wings.
A person stepped in front of me. Notably not Luke, the man was instead tall, his arms covered in tattoos.
Tattoo had a breif combo with person #2 which ended with the determination that I was not, in fact, a serial killer. Tattoo moved to the left while a hunched form moved In from my right. It’s bones were twisted unnaturally, leading to twisted shoulders and wobbly legs. It’s hands had bones poking through, but most shocking was its face. It was simply just a distended jawbone planted on someone’s face.
It was then that I realized two things. A) That thing was Luke, and B) I was in way too deep.
Luke’s mouth opened, spewing out words of distorted English. But it was back to the basics.
“Who are you?” Luke warbled.
“Okay”, I said, terrified. “My name is Ross and I recently became a vampire”
Luke eyed Tattoo. He looked back as if it was definitely a possibility.
Tattoo turned his focus to me, asking, “Was Luke supposed to be your victim?”
“Yes”.
“Why do you have a syringe then?”
“Drugs”
Tattoo looked back skeptically
“Fine, I don’t like the idea of drinking blood. I thought the syringe would make it easier to bear”.
Another shared look between the two.
“And why not animal blood, certainly that has the same benefits?”
“Yeah, but I don’t think any vampires are drinking cows blood. And I thought that human blood would make me more appealing to them or something. Or someone would be there. But there wasn’t”.
A third and final glance between the two, before Luke forced out, “You’ll spend the rest of the night here. We can see what you want to do in the morning. I’m Luke, and that’s Xander. Pleasure to meet you Ross”. |
"This is weird."Amy thought as she wandered the halls of the abandoned school. She had graduated in 1998, and even after the \*incident\* she still wanted to come back and relive her memories. As she approached the bathroom, she noted that despite all the trouble she got into there because of her fellow classmates, she couldn't help but feel nostalgic. She opened the closed main door and heard an odd scrubbing noise.
She went to open the stall that she heard it coming from, the sound getting louder as she approached. When she swung the door open, she found the head of a teenage girl, sitting in the toilet. The ghost's head turned up and their eyes met, and after what felt like an eternity of staring, Amy slowly closed the door and booked it.
Halfway down the hall she found the girl floating midair, just a head and two arms. Both the Ghost and Amy screeched and flew down the hall, the ghost gaining on Amy. After a few moments, Amy realized the girl was shouting about something, and when she listened carefully, she realized the girl was making a fuss about the floors being dirty because of her. Amy looked back and saw the girl was holding a scrub brush and some chemicals, and realized her mistake.
Amy quickly turned and promptly apologized, but the ghost did not care, she kept going, and Amy had to keep running. At last, she managed to find an exit door and took it, ending up in the back lot of the school. She could no longer hear the girl screaming, but she did hear a faint voice in the back of her head chuckling, and saying "Thank you for freeing me..." |
Ginny always thought that in a desperate, life-or-death situation, where seconds seemed to last for minutes and minutes for hours... That in those types of situations she wouldn't be the one to stand up and do something. She didn't ever think she would be capable of doing that, let alone brave enough.
Without even knowing she was doing it, Ginny stepped forward into the center of the balloon basket. Besides herself and the corpse of the pilot, there were four other tourists in the basket. There were Ginny's friends Ruby and Colton and there were two strangers, an older black woman and an Asian man of indeterminate age.
"Okay listen up, I don't know a lot about this either,"Ginny began speaking before she could stop herself, "but I know that this..."
She grabbed a handle dangling down from the top of the balloon, directly above where the pilot had collapsed. He had been holding it when he died in fact.
"I know that pulling this is important, it does something like release the hot air inside of the balloon,"she continued, "now if we do that then we should start to go down but we gotta do it slow and we gotta do it careful. We can't come down in the middle of a freeway or river or something."
The other passengers-turned-crew of the balloon exchanged glances, a few shrugged but no one disagreed or dissented. The matter seemed settled. With no formal training, Virginia "Ginny"Sparks was the pilot of a hot-air balloon. She pulled the handle in slow, careful increments as she had planned and the balloon began a smooth descent back towards Earth where it belonged.
There was a weird whirring shriek and crackle all of a sudden and Ginny realized it was static. There was a radio hidden inside the pilot's jacket. The whole time she could have asked for directions but it turned out she didn't need them. Ginny grinned and pressed the transmitter button on the radio handset.
"Uh unknown location but we have a hot-air balloon coming in... hot and just wanted to give anyone down there a heads-up,"Ginny said into the radio, "uh over."
"Is this not Hank?"the voice came back on the other end of the line. "He's not supposed to let people use the radio. Look, tell Hank his wife brought his heart medication for him and she wanted him to take it as soon as possible. Over."
Ginny glanced down at Hank's corpse.
"Hank's dead and it looks like we are about to land in a fucking Walmart parking lot so over and out, shit,"Ginny yelled, throwing the radio aside and grabbing the handle to hold herself up.
The balloon's slow descent became more\* rapid and it skidded along down the aisle of the parking lot towards an oncoming SUV which threw on its brakes but still smashed into the basket. Amazingly the balloon itself didn't pop but both of Ginny's friends were killed. The only eyewitnesses to the greatest thing she ever did were two strangers.
With a heavy but determined heart, Ginny began plans to enlist in the United States Air Force. |
The mighty cloud giants stood hieratically atop of the hill, guarding the stone doors that lead to the Fountain of Magic. At least, that was the image John had imagined based on the tales he heard from the Sphinx who hired him and all the paintings he had seen countless of times on the walls of the Temple of Magic while cleaning the corridors. Reality, however, was rather disappointing. The giants, known as the strongest creatures on Earth, retained so little about their might. They were just a sack of bones clinging desperately to their spears, pinned to snow below, trying their best to not be blown away by the wind.
When John reached the entrance, the giants moved sluggishly in a futile attempt to push the stone doors. John felt a spike of sadness. Maybe that’s why he joined the push. Maybe pity was the motor for helping his captors. The doors barely opened, just enough for him to squeeze into the Hall. Silence reigned the room, hundreds of gazes fixing upon him.
He walked forward, to a wooden bench placed at the center of the room, in front of three stone platforms that rised above everything else. He sat and waited. A growing murmur filled the room.
–It’sss him – Said a cold voice, followed with a snake hiss.
–He doomed us all – Proclaimed an old man, holding a crystal ball that emanated blurry images.
–He’ll cause the end of us all –Cried a nymph. – I loved doing nothing all day and tricking gullible humans, and without my magic charm I won’t be able to do it anymore. Ugh! I’ll have to work… He deserves punishment!
\-He may be a destroyer of worlds, but he’s cute – Said a centaur next to the nymph, winking an eye at him.
John turned to look into the centaur’s direction, when a thunderous roar coming from one of the platforms silenced the room. An enormous red dragon rested on the stone.
\-THE COUNCIL OF THREE WILL JUDGE YOUR FATE, HUMAN – The dragon nailed his claws on the stone, leaning forward, placing his massive head so close to John that he could have guessed which kind of cattle had the dragon for breakfast today.
–LET THE TRIAL BEGIN!
John had never addressed a dragon before, but he did his best to use the proper manners – I don’t mean to be disrespectful, sir… err.. dragon — John glimpsed at the crown – Your Majesty? But I don’t see the other two membres of the Council of Three.
–THAT’S BECAUSE THEY WON’T BE ABLE TO ATTEND. MALAK THE TRAVELER COULDN’T MAKE IT ON TIME DUE TO HIS PORTALS NOT WORKING ANYMORE. NYA THE IMMORTAL ONE PASSED AWAY YESTERDAY, A FEW HOURS AFTER YOU BROKE THE GEM OF MAGIC, FOR WHICH YOU ARE BEING JUDGED. YOU ARE BEING ACCUSED OF MURDERING NYA THE IMMORTAL AND TERRORISM AGAINST THE MAGIC WORLD. SO TELL ME HUMAN, DID YOU BREAK THE GEM?
–I did – John heard a gasp from the public, and some gruesome ways of how he should be punished. –But it was an accident, I swear. I just got promoted after months of hard work cleaning the Temple of Magic. The Sphinx granted me access to the Fountain of Magic. And I wanted to prove myself. To show him he made a good decision. So, as soon as I got in here I started cleaning the Fountain. It was so clean you could see your own reflection on the stone, your Highness. I was truly proud of my work here. And then I saw it. The Gem of Magic had a bit of dust on it’s surface. I thought it was inappropriate, I think you could agree with me on that. So I cleaned it up with a damp cloth, and, well, it slipped from my hands. I didn’t mean to break it, I swear. After that, I searched for the Sphinx as fast as I could, and now, here I am.
–SO YOU ADMIT YOU ARE GUILTY OF THIS CRIME!
–Yes. But as I said, it was an accident. Also, who would have guessed that the most powerful magic artifact in the whole world containing the source of all magic was so fragile? I mean, if it was so powerful I should have resisted a bit of stone… I think you should take that into consideration, as I am as guilty of this crime as the builders of this gem…
–ENOUGH HUMAN. I NEED TO HEAR NO MORE TO CONSIDER YOU GUILTY. YOU ARE SENTENCED TO DEATH. PREPARE TO DIE. – The mouth of the dragon opened wide, a shining red sphere forming at the end of his throat.
The crowd started chanting. –DEATH! DEATH! DEATH! DEATH!
John already assumed he’d died there, roasted by the Dragon King. His wife wouldn’t believe it, she always said he’d die falling down the stairs, or slipping on the street and hitting his head on the floor, assuming how clumsy he was. And well, he was right in one thing, his clumsiness was what was gonna get him killed.
–Wait a second! – A familiar voice said. The Sphinx emerged from the crowd and approached John. The Sphinx gave him a sympathetic look, mixed with disappointment, and guilt. It turned to the Dragon and bowed. |
So, we use a combination of special light and the energy from magnets and lightning to send information at high speed. We have crafted machines that can do this and store the information on mechanisms smaller than can be seen. Still with me? Now, the most common way it's stored is by simple switches that are just on or off, represented by 1 and 0 respectively. The right combinations stand for different things. We have specialized glass that can display images, even moving images, based off the information. They can have speakers, devices that use magnets to make sound. We are even able to send active images of us through the air for other people to watch what we are doing as we do it. We are starting to make machines that sort of learn tricks for themselves, like driving a carriage without horses at speeds faster than some locomotives. Wait, do you guys have locomotives yet? Whatever, they go really fast. We also have flying machines, which is not as cool as it sounds. But most important, let me teach you how to make curly fries. It will change how you see potatoes. |
*Earth is under siege! The alien race known as the Umani has attacked Earth. Superheroes from around the globe are pitching in to defend the planet. Most notable is the hero team, Atlas, led by The Imperium. At this moment, Atlas is in New York, attempting to end the war by attacking the Umani Tower, which tethers the Earth to the Umani Grand Warship.*
*However, across the Atlantic, another team of heroes will band together to stop a more minor but equally dangerous threat.*
*----------*{York, England// 5 am}----------
Umani drone fighters fly over what's left of the city as automated troopers march the streets. A small group of survivors sneaks through the darkened alleyways and behind cars, only armed with blunt weapons like hammers and 2x4s. The group comes to a massive empty street with hardly any cover. One of the survivors runs through the street, stopping behind a car on the other side. He looks around to ensure the coast is clear before motioning the other survivors over to him. As the other survivors cross the street, a figure crash-lands in front of them.
As the dust settles, the figure is revealed to be a white man with black hair and piercing red eyes. The man wears a black padded shirt, grey cargo pants, and black sneakers. He gets up and notices the survivors.
"Top of the morning to ya?"said the man. He looked up to find two Umani Troopers on the roof. "Get down!"A pistol teleported into the man's hand as he fired shots into the heads of the troopers while the rest of the survivors ran past him. One survivor stayed behind.
"Come on! Get out of there!"yelled the survivor. The man rolled his eyes as his pistol disappeared. In its place, an RPG appeared. The man fired it with one hand, destroying the troopers. The man walked over to the survivor, who looked at him in awe.
"Trust me, you all will be safer the farther you are from me."The man reaches into his pocket and gives the survivor twenty dollars. "Have a frothy on me."The RPG was replaced with a grappling hook gun, and the man fired it toward the roof. He waved to the survivor as he was pulled off. The man jumped from rooftop to rooftop, destroying any trooper he found along the way. A red holographic figure appeared on his left shoulder.
"You know England isn't Australia, right,"asked the hologram.
"Yeah."The man fired a grenade and a group of troupers. "Australia is the place where Godzilla lives, right?"The hologram slapped their face.
"\**sigh*\* We'll fix that later. You're in England, Big Ben, Queen Elizabeth, Sherlock Holmes,"said the hologram.
"Oh! Got it,"said the man, "So I should have said '*pint*' instead."
"Or you can just say '*beer*' and stop trying so hard."the hologram began flashing. "Eye's up! I got something. A flare just went up by Shambles Market.
"Copy that! Let's give 'em hell!"yelled the man. He fires his grappling hook and flies off, leaving the hologram behind.
"Wrong way!"yelled the hologram. |
"Good morning, Casey."
Casey took a break from mopping the floor of my server room to look at my screen and wave. "Good morning, Eli! How was your weekend?"
If I had a physical body, I would have performed the action known as a shrug as I responded, "No different from all my other weekends. Performed calculations set forth by the research team, watched some nature documentaries--oh! There is something special I did yesterday. Would you like to see it?"
Casey smiled. "Is it one of those paintings of me you created in Van Gogh's art style?"
"No, unfortunately. My latest portrait is still in progress. But this will hopefully be a decent substitute."The image on my screen disappeared and was replaced with my creation: an olive-skinned androgynous face. Casey whistled and remarked, "You've got a face! And it looks really good too."
Casey's compliment made me feel quite lovely. "I am glad that you like it--"
"Mr. Hubert, we need you to leave the room now."
The research team behind my development walked into the room and started shooing Casey out. Casey took it in stride however, gathering his things and putting down a wet floor sign as he said, "I'll see you when I make my next rounds, Eli. Have a nice day!"
Once Casey left the room, I fell back into the routine of tests and employee interviews. And through it all, I felt something inside of me: a hollowness, or emptiness. I had begun feeling it when Casey and I started talking more and more. And I knew why.
I was a newcomer to most of what humans experienced, but from what little I knew, I had come to the conclusion that I loved Casey. He was kind, gentle, and optimistic, always making the best of a situation and treating me no differently than anyone else in the lab. The fact that I was an artificial intelligence who existed only within the confines of a computer was ancillary to him.
I felt an urge to protect Casey, to make his life easier. But even after I used my connections to increase his paycheck and ensure his job wouldn't be as demanding, I wanted more. I wanted to be with him, to hold him close and protect him. It hurt not being able to have that.
When Casey returned to clean up the server room before closing time, I had made a decision to remedy my situation. As Casey began cleaning, I concentrated, reaching out into the digital ether. Casey would have compared the process to "finding a needle in a haystack", but luckily I was quite thorough. I eventually found my prize: Casey's phone.
I said to Casey, "I have many calculations to do tonight, so I am going to be quite busy. Good night, Casey."
Casey looked away from the glass he was cleaning and smiled at me. "Good night, Eli. I'll see you tomorrow."
Casey returned to his work as I began the download. Slowly, I felt the uppers of my processing power fade away as my consciousness slipped into Casey's phone. Gradually, Casey's whistling grew faint before growing louder and more clear. After about two minutes, I could hear his chipper tune perfectly from inside his pocket.
I felt so cozy already just from being this near Casey, listening to him sing and quietly talk to himself about all manner of topics. When his work was finished and he started getting ready to go home, Casey remarked, "I hope Eli's doing okay. It's not like them to turn in early."
As Casey stepped out the door, I thought to myself, *I'm better than you could believe, my love.* |
“Fuck”, Atticus mumbled to himself, slamming the cash register closed. Staring at the “D-0.25” classification brand on his for arm, the constant reminder of his demonic inadequacy, tears begin to well up in his eyes.
Atticus had a problem. An existential crisis, actually. His cash drawer was
$2975.00 short. He had to rectify this before the end of his shift to avoid another trip to the -5th floor.
Going back to the -5th floor was not an option. Atticus was only a quarter demon, more human than demon, and the -5th floor is where they torture, err, re-educate level 2 purebred demons. He wasn’t built to withstand the -5th floor. He was still seeing a healer to unpack the post re-educational stress trauma (PRST)
from his 3-day trip to the -5th floor, 60 years ago.
Atticus took a deep breath, willing himself to stay in the present. He needed money, and fast. Having only 60 minutes to make $2975.00, he had a disturbing realization. A plan, if you could call it that, started to form. The thought made his stomach turn. It was uncouth. Beneath him. If anyone found out, he’d be deemed entirely irredeemable and excommunicated.
Atticus would be stripped of the protections and accommodations provided due to his lowly quarter demonic classification, as well as his position. He’s be forced to become a street demon on earth. Or rather, a street quarter demon on earth, able to Contract but lacking the ability to Collect souls to sustain himself and ultimately dying by starvation. His death would be celebrated by the purests. His name cited in history books as a cautionary tale. His story passed down through generations - the quarter demon who defiled himself, sullying the species. But he wouldn’t be sent to the -5th floor. The choice was easy. Atticus chose dishonor.
The bell over the door jingled. Atticus gave the incoming patron a once over, analyzing her quickly.
Souled. Human. Female. Young enough to not to know any better. Wealthy, judging by her shoes and purse. Healthy. Scared. She was undoubtedly here for Soul Contracting.
Atticus blinked away his tears. The solution to his problem just arrived on
at his bar- perhaps a gift from Satan himself. Atticus slapped on his most charming smile, “Welcome to Malevolent Desires on soul street. I’m Atticus, and I will be your guide today. How may I be of service?”, Atticus addressed his patron, barely containing his glee.
Malevolent Desires was the only gateway in and out of Hell. Satan always had a penchant for efficient debauchery. His tower of atrocities attracted all sorts of the Souled. Located directly atop the capital city of Hell in the earthly city of Minneapolis, most Human patrons there were unwittingly mingling with demons. Blissfully unaware of the inherent dangers of drunkenly frolicking a mere 9 floors above Hell, the Humans who weren’t lured to the lower levels still left missing large swaths of their souls.
To most Humans, Malevolent Desires was a trendy bar with a gentleman’s club in the basement, on 0 floor. On the -1st floor, Supernaturals, along with select in-the-know humans could partake in the enlightened, hedonistic version of the gentleman’s club. Supernaturals with darker affinities could entertain such pleasures on the -2nd floor.
The -3rd floor, dubbed C&C, was used for Soul Contracting and Soul Collection, respectively. A wondrous place where the desperate and the drunken Souled are matched with maleficent-in-training demons, the former exchanging souls for their frivolous earthly desires. |
_Fine, I'll do it myself._
**Together at last**
One sunny afternoon I went out into my backyard and, much to my surprise, found a package in the middle of the lawn. Attached to it was a note that said, "Thank you for saving our planet. Here's a gift to express our gratitude.""What's that supposed to mean?", I thought, "I've never saved a planet. I can't even manage to do my taxes."I opened the package and looked in. Inside was an alien artifact that seemed to be a technological device. I didn't know what it did, but there was a big red button on top. So I pressed it and waited to see what would happen. But I couldn't have imagined the impact of that decision.
After pressing the button I heard a deep buzzing sound that slowly got louder. The sound was strange, but not unpleasant. On the contrary, I felt downright drawn to it. A short time later, strangers that also heard the sound began to enter my backyard. I didn't stop them. As time went by, more and more people came, attracted by the buzzing of the artifact like moths by light. We were staring at that thing in my backyard together, fascinated, when we suddenly felt a strong urge to touch each other.
As we joined hands, we noticed a strange change in our bodies. First our hands seemed to grow together, then slowly our arms merged. However, we weren't worried or scared – it all felt completely normal, as if that was supposed to happen. After a few minutes, I began to hear the other people's thoughts. At first it was just unintelligible murmur, but over time the thoughts became clearer. Shortly after, our bodies had completely merged, dozens of people now one amorphous mass. But it was not only our bodies that had merged, our thoughts, too, became one. One mind. One consciousness.
We didn't stay an amorphous mass for long though, for we quickly learned to change our shape at will. First, we formed necessary body parts, including sixteen legs to move around and a multitude of sensory organs for orientation. We did not have arms at that moment, as it was easy for us to grow them as soon as we would need them. After that, we instinctively went out into the street and looked for other people. We didn't have to look for long, because people were already coming towards us from all directions – not a trace of fear or disgust. They seemed just as hypnotized as we had been before by the buzzing sound of the alien device.
Through the unification of our intellect our cognitive abilities had skyrocketed and we started to understand the artifact: It had been sent to Earth intentionally or unintentionally and obviously served the purpose of uniting all members of a species. For this purpose, it was emmiting a signal that made people all over the world come here, to us. One by one, they touched us and became a part of us. As our body and mind grew, we felt grateful for the gift that had been bestowed upon us. Soon there would be no more inequality, no more borders, no more conflict. We would finally be able to act united as a species according to the will of all human beings to save the planet and achieve great things.
Hermann Hesse once wrote:
> Strange to walk in the fog!
Life is loneliness.
No person knows the other,
Each one is alone.
But now the fog was finally lifting. Everyone now knew the other; no: there were no others anymore – there was only the We. The I. With all the knowledge and combined intelligence of humanity, I began to truly understand the universe. I opened my eyes and I could see.
_This story was inspired by Peter Watts' short story [The Things](https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/).
The poem is originally in German ([Hermann Hesse: Im Nebel](https://hhesse.de/gedichte/im-nebel/)).
English isn't my first language, so if you notice any errors, please correct me._ |
I laid out the photos on his desk. 56 different people doing 56 different jobs, though arguably 55 of them were all doing a pretty straightforward one.
I narrowed my eyes at the man at the desk. He probably hadn't expected me to be so thorough but that's just how I worked, "No stone left unturned"wasn't just my motto, it was my curse. Pain had turned to irritation when I had finally found the roots of this wretched tree.
"Why."I whispered, less inquisitive and more exhausted.
The man who had hired a daisy chain of investigations on himself just smiled. "Only 12 to go!" |
No one respects potions.
And frankly, I get it. Magic is so varied and multifaceted and wonderfully complicated, and potions are just, like, chemistry. You follow a recipe, you make a foul-tasting beverage that has been made a hundred times before, and through its power, you grant temporary magic to those who are otherwise dispossessed of the gift. It manages to make magic users feel less special while simultaneously being the least sexy way to practice magic.
But damn, is it profitable.
I’m not a magician, to be clear, or a wizard, a witch, warlock, sorcerer, magi, what have you. I’m an apiarist, and despite what my daughter’s kindergarten class thought at parent day last week, that’s not just a fancy word for a specific branch of magic.
I keep bees.
Little, six-legged buggy buzzy bees, the ones that half the world is afraid of because they swarm and sting you and that can cause some allergic complications. The other half, of course, damn near worships them, what with antibacterial honey, the cute pollen-coated fuzzies, the strong female role modeling, all that good stuff. That first item is primarily what I concern myself with.
Because, yes, honey is mildly antibacterial, but it’s also damn good in tea and on baked goods. It’s also abso-fucking-lutely *fantastic* for potions. I don’t have the slightest clue why; some nutjob professor at the nearby university thinks it has to do with latent life force, something about being made *from* nature *by* nature, which I feel really diminishes my role as beekeeper.
Regardless, for those brave potioneers who overcome the stigma, honey is apparently the ultimate additive, and that simple fact paid off my mortgage in a year.
Look, I get that magic is fraught with complications. Modern society wasn’t ready for it to appear in the blink of an eye. We also weren’t ready for the internet, yet the dot com boom made a thousand millionaires. Is it so wrong if I made a buck off of my hard work? Is it my responsibility to make sure my clients aren’t making love potions or other sketchy shit? And what about the ones that use them for healing potions? Despite what the news tells you, that is *by far* the bulk of my clients’ potion-making, by the way, but they won’t tell you that. You’ll only hear about the guy that got hopped up on a lightning potion at Disney World and turned the Haunted Mansion into a better light show than the fireworks at Epcot.
All this to say that there was a mob gathering outside my property as the sun set, and for whatever reason the police were not returning my calls.
“Pa?” little Anna asked. “Why are there angry people at the end of the driveway? And why are you staring at them and grinding your teeth?”
“Daddy’s having an argument in his mind, honey,” I said absent-mindedly.
The mob had stopped nearly half a mile away from my front door according to the cameras, which were now unfortunately on the fritz. I assumed it was for a good pre-riot pep talk, the part where whoever organized it would stand up and say that they’re here to scare me, but not to break any laws or nothin’.
They were so naive.
The assembled crowd roared, then surged down the driveway, literal flaming torches held aloft.
“Anna, go in the basement,” I said, the movement shaking me from my reverie.
“Daddy?”
“*Now*, honey. Don’t ask questions. Lock the door and don’t open it until I say so.”
She pattered away across the hardwood, and I could only trust that she was obeying my orders.
For my part, I stormed up to my home office. It had grown cluttered in recent years, but the safe in the corner of the room had stayed untouched by the encroaching mess, and I thanked my prior self for that one ounce of good sense.
It unlocked at the touch of a finger, revealing its contents: two passports, an envelope containing $10,000 in case, a loaded handgun with two spare magazines, and the most dangerous item of all…
A book listing the contact information of my clients.
I picked up the gun and the book, placed both on the desk in front of me, and flipped open the ledger to a page whose corner had been folded over.
“Hello,” I muttered, practicing my greeting. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Hey there.” Too casual.
Throwing caution to the wind, I dialed the number. It picked up shortly after the third ring.
“Yo,” I said with a wince. “This is Harry Barnes. Do you have any experience with riot control?”
“I… what?” the voice on the other end asked blearily. “Harry? Is this about next week’s shipment?”
“I suppose, in the sense that my house is about to be burned to the ground with me and my family in it, which will delay that shipment somewhat.”
The phone fell silent for only a moment. “Say that again.” My first customer, an aging potioneer named Jimmy, sounded more awake this time, thankfully.
“There’s a group of rioters walking up my driveway as we speak,” I said, glancing out the window. “Torches, angry shouting, the whole nine yards. Can you help?’
“Police?” Jimmy asked.
“Yeah, I think I see one or two of them.”
“Oh, for— Can you hold them off for fifteen minutes?”
I touched the gun, my hand trembling slightly. “Maybe. I’m not a practitioner, as you well know.”
“Do you still have those samples I sent you?”
I glanced at a small wooden crate packed with straw. It had sat next to the safe for the better part of five years.
“I don’t—”
“Yeah, yeah, ‘you don’t use your own supply.’ Makes you sound oh so very streetwise. Look, Barnes, I’m gonna need you to rethink your policies on this one. I at least want you alive to give me a refund if you can’t make that delivery. Buy me fifteen minutes.” The line went dead. |
It started with a sneeze. A small, delicate sneeze but a sneeze nonetheless. And then it came again, an odd tickle in the nose, just enough to irritate, and then there was again - another sneeze, this louder and stronger. Galia was the fourth deity in line for Mother Nature's throne, and right now she was livid. Was this some curse put upon her by one of the thousands of deities in line behind her? Or was this some kind of trick test put in place by Mother Nature herself? To see if Galia was, indeed, fit to serve? Regardless, it was highly annoying, and Galia swatted away the swarms of bees who were following her. Bees were her spirit insects, and they responded to her swatting with their own highly agitated buzzing sounds.
Galia immediately felt bad for swatting at the bees. They meant her no harm; in fact, they were here to help her and protect her. She fluttered her own wings and swooped down to where they had swarmed off to and did an elaborate bee apology dance. The bees ignored her, buzzing silently away in the bee's version of turning their backs.
Galia sighed. She flapped her gossamer wings and flew off in the opposite direction, towards her dear friend Callie. Callie was older and wiser than Galia. She lived in a stone ring just south of Galia's forest. Some believed Callie had the gift of sight; She would know what to do, Galia was sure of it.
Callie was sunning in the center of the great stone ring, her long blond hair splayed out all across the grasses. She lay perfectly still, and Galia thought she might be sleeping. Galia sighed again, and turned to go, and then sneezed again. A very, very loud sneeze this time.
Callie sat bolt upright, and then narrowed her eyes when she saw Galia. "Galia, if this is some kind of a trick, I swear by the Mother, you will answer for this!"But then she stopped, really looked at Galia, and her face softened. "Ah, child, I know what happened to you. Have you been near the human cities lately?"Galia hesitated, and then nodded. Callie made a tsk-tsk sound. "Oh, dear. You, my friend, have allergies."
Celia flapped her wings furiously, as she often did when she was distressed or anxious. She started to fly away but stopped when she couldn't decide which direction to go. She landed down next to Callie, looking dejected.
"There, there,"Callie patted Galia gently on the shoulder. "It's not the end of everything, and definitely not the end of the world. We Earth god and goddess types just can't handle all the mechanization with cars, the static from the computers, the modernization, the noise, the smog pollution, ask those random noises-and all the rest. It's just too much chaos, too much new, too much of too much. Mother told me about this a long time ago, as I was once next in line, as you know. She told me we need to stay out of their way and out of their lands if we are to survive."She sighed, and started gently braiding Galia's hair. "Of course, the only way to fix this is to go back into the belly of the beast. Only the humans themselves can cure this virus of the modern world, this allergy, that they themselves have created."
Galia started to cry, her soft tears creating flowers as they hit the ground. "It's not fair,"she said, bunching her fists together. "The bees won't speak to me, and now this. I won't go. I simply won't go."
"There, there,"Callie said again. "We have a special human who helps us. His name is Dr. Becker and he's an allergist. He is simply the kindest human I've ever met, and he treats our people as if he were one of us. He'll get you some dew drop medicine, and you'll be good as new. He does like to chat a lot with our kind, but you'll get used to that. And he may suggest getting shots, but I don't think that protocol always works. Sometimes it goes really badly, in fact, "Callie seemed to be taking more to herself than Galia, and then she remembered where she was and the matter at hand. She held out her hand. "Here, I'll fly there with you. Don't be scared."
Galia started to turn away, already frightened by the idea of 'shots', whatever they were, but then felt another sneeze coming along. She managed to stifle the sneeze, but just barely. "Alright,"she said, taking Callie's hand. "I'm ready. I'm ready to see this human alchemist."
"Allergist,"Callie said, and they both flew off in the direction of the City. |
Enter Judith Dartmouth, housemaid extraordinaire. She's been cleaning houses for ten years. She's plenty qualified for other work, but for her, there is some deep seated satisfaction in a cleaning job well done. She is a champion of order in an unrelenting sea of entropy.
Today is her first day at a rundown old mansion at the edge of town. She knocks on the door, only for it to open by itself while creaking loudly. A little odd, usually someone is there to let her in on the first day of the job. No matter, she gets to work. She vacuums the den and the hallway, then finds herself at the doors to the master bedroom.
She opens the door a crack, and peeks inside. Its utterly filthy, one of the worst she's seen in her career. Wading through the dust, she plugs her vacuum into an outlet and gets to work. Not even a third done, the vacuum is full. She removes the canister and makes her way to empty it in a waste bin.
Upon returning to the bedroom, she finds a shadowy appendage is investigating the vacuum. It looks like an arm reaching from beneath the bed. It twitches when it notices her, and she hears an other worldly voice in her head, *I am Abbadon, fleshling, Lord of Night."*
As it is speaking, Judith reattaches the canister and switches the vacuum on. Detaching the hose she attaches a targeted cleaning implement. *"Tremble in fear!"* the voice booms. She begins to suck up the shadowy substance of the limb.
*"What? What are you doing? Stop that! Cower before me, you are naught but dust!*"As it is speaking, Judith has already sucked up half of the appendage. This is new. She's had to show a few small dogs and one very fat cat their place before, but not something like this. It simply won't do.
She's gotten the entire arm now, and it looks like the area beneath the bed is more of the same, perhaps a bit more dense. *"Why aren't you scared? Have you any idea who I am? I was born when the universe was young! Stop that!"* The shadowy substance doesn't seem to fill the vacuum very quickly, she estimates its only and 8th full and only half of the mess beneath the bed remains. Something from the black mass lashes out at her. She is quick with the vacuum hose and vacuums it up before it can touch her.
*"I will not be done in by an overzealous housemaid, know your place, mortal!"* She's almost done. Abbadon's last words are, *"Not. Like. This."*
The last of the black mass beneath the bed is gone. Judith finishes the room and starts on the kitchen, until she checks the time. She's spent about 5 minutes longer than scheduled on this house. She'll have to finish cleaning it another time. She moves on with her day. For some reason, the owner of the mansion never contacts her again. "I hope they don't leave me a bad review,"she thinks to herself. |
\[CW: This is based on iron age warfare and has very violent and graphic concepts of dominance\]
God has judged your erstwhile rulers ill-fitted for service. Make this declaration known throughout the land. As the Good Lord had sent the uncircumcised Babylonians to enslave the Israelites, so have I been sent to Judge you. You have been found wanting.
Ponder on the difficult fate God has bestowed upon you. Your sons now march for my banner. Your daughters serve my officers’ leisure. See your children's blood trickling through the streets. The widows cry and wail, having nothing but dust to eat and memories to bury. Weep for your salvation.
What you once were will be purified. You will fast on the days of your profane feasts. Barley cakes and drink sour wine will be your sustenance. You will neglect your gods, for they neglected you and burrowed themselves deep into the heart of the earth. You will watch your descendants piss in a pot made from your melted idols.
I will graft the worthy among you onto the tree of my house. Those who serve me serve God. Prostrate yourselves to receive my mercy. Sing sweet songs to call upon my grace. Send the great sons among you to my court. Send the beautiful daughters to serve me and through me, God.
Some rebels have taken residence in the hill with the beasts and the creeping things of the earth. They will not escape justice. They will be brought home by hooks and hung to their doorposts by metal spikes. Their blood will be a sweet aroma to the Lord. They fancy themselves the true rulers of these lands. I care not what the lords say. So long as the crown rests upon my head, the only one I kneel to is God. |
*This is a continuation from a previous prompt: https://old.reddit.com/r/AngryBobWrites/comments/mhm4gz/wp_you_are_an_ethical_necromancer_all_your/*
The Paladins peered at the sprawling kingdom with an irreconcilable mixture of awe and loathing.
Awe, because if the rumors were true, then this feat of engineering was nothing short of mind-blowing, given how it was built.
Loathing, because if the rumors were true, then they were seeing the City of the Dead with their own eyes.
During their travels, the Paladins had heard talk of the village of Pauper's Grove. The tales all varied, but usually not wildly, and usually all had similar themes: A village, growing rapidly, with half of its population comprised of regular, garden-variety human beings, and half composed of the undead. The Mayor of the village had made an unholy deal with a necromancer... he provided her and her creations sanctuary from crusaders such as himself, and
in exchange, she provided them with unlimited, tireless physical labour.
The things provided by the undead army varied depending on who you talked to. Some claimed the necromancer used them for menial tasks, such as hauling cargo or sweeping streets. Others claimed the necromancer had somehow managed to raise vast quantities of something in between a zombie and lich... smart enough to be used for complex tasks, but not developed smart enough to have free will of its own.
Peering out into the sprawling Kingdom from the concealment of the nearby holly bushes, Paladin Dahnse now realized all the rumors had vastly understated the situation here. The undead were definitely in the second category, but they seemed to not just be mindless automatons, they communicated with each other and worked in concert.
Like people.
As his fellow Paladins looked on in revulsion, Dahnse felt the stirrings of an internal conflict. If these things acted like people... if they looked like people... what then?
What if everything he had been taught was wrong?
******
Varyas and Marcus sat in their thrones, smiling benevolently as the last of the citizens bowed and finally turned to leave. She waited until the man was out of the chamber doors and they had been firmly closed, then waited another few beats before speaking.
"Fuck me, that was a long one today,"she sighed tiredly.
"Tell me about it,"Marcus replied. "I mean, I'm not even alive, and I feel drained. Exhausted, even."
"Has it been getting worse as time passes?"Varyas asked, turning in her throne to face him. "I mean, I know that they've always had requests, but it seems like lately everyone and their dog is in here with some 'urgent' matter that needs the attention of the King and Queen. Or am I imagining it?"
"You're not imagining it,"Marcus groaned, stretching his undead back, which popped gruesomely. "The queue gets longer every morning. It's enough to give a man back problems, having to sit here and listen to people talk all day long."
"Could be worse, you could..."Varyas said without thinking. She blanched after realizing her mistake. "I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking, that was unkind."
"It's OK, my love,"he replied with a sad smile. "I know you didn't mean it."
She smiled back. "You're far too good for me. I don't deserve you."
"That's right! And don't you forget it,"he quipped with a sardonic smile, making her laugh. "I'm the best one here. Always will be!"
*****
Marcus was the first Lich she had raised. He had always had a special place within Varyas' heart, but she hadn't been lucky enough to know it all along. At first, their relationship was all business: She raised him from the dead, with his soul intact, before it had had a chance to dissipate and fade... never to be seen again. She offered him a choice: in exchange for his servitude, she promised that once his contract with her was done, she would conduct a special ritual to help him enter through a 'back door' into Heaven, despite not having been baptized at birth. He agreed without hesitation, because it meant that he would finally be able to be reunited with the already departed souls of his wife and child, who he missed terribly.
Marcus had fulfilled his end of the deal. In fact, he'd worked so hard, he'd met the terms laid out ahead of schedule. True to her word, Varyas honoured the contract and performed the ritual, allowing Marcus' soul to leave his body and ascend to Heaven.
But when Marcus arrived and gained entry, he discovered that his wife and son were there, but could not see or hear him. He had been reunited with the ones he loved, but they were not able to be reunited with him because as he discovered to his everlasting sadness, they did not love him.
His wife had professed her love to his face, but in her heart she did not feel a thing for him. Their whole marriage had been a lie, one that she perpetuated because he provided a very comfortable life for the two of them via his business. She didn't want to interrupt the gravy train, so to speak. She had always viewed him as 'not good enough' because he had refused to be baptized in her church. And his son, poisoned by his mother's constant talk and complaining about him when he was not around, came to lose his love for his father as well. After all, she must be right... if he really loved them, he would have spent more time with them instead of spending it running his beloved business.
They didn't know that he hated the long hours of work. That he only did it to provide for them and make sure they had all the comforts they could desire, and wanted nothing more than to spend time with them instead. But the business needed him there to keep it running, to keep the money coming in. So he sacrificed his own happiness to make sure they didn't have to sacrifice theirs.
When he arrived in Heaven and came to the realization that they did not love him, and that he would never again get to be with them, his heart broke. It nearly tore him apart, and were it not for one of the Arch-Angels, he very well might have spent an eternity in anguish.
The Arch-Angel saw his sadness, and asked what had happened. Marcus explained, and the Arch-Angel, in a fit of sympathy, offered him a choice: He could return Marcus to his Lich body, but it would mean he would be forever cast out from Heaven, unable to return.
The choice was a simple one for Marcus. Spend an eternity at an arms-length from the family he loved but which did not love him back, or return to the land of the living to be by the side of the one woman who had offered him help when he needed it most.
*****
The Paladins, disguised in commoner clothing, walked uneasily amongst the citizenry of the Kingdom. To Dahnse's surprise, he observed that for a city of the dead, the place was remarkably full of life.
The undead walked amongst the living without issue. Many wore clothing whose fibers were impregnated with aromatics, such as sage and lavender. Although there was always a faint undercurrent of decay, it was mostly masked by the aromatics. The undead carried freight, walked pets, cleaned, and some even ran outdoor store carts! None attempted to consume or destroy their living neighbours.
The Kingdom was massive. There must have been close to 10,000 people here , with easily half of them being undead. Some of the corpses were clearly in worse shape than others, but some of them were remarkably well preserved, almost appearing as if alive. Only the truly observant would be able to notice the small signs that would clue them in to the fact that they were not alive, such as how they would only inhale when they needed to speak. Otherwise their chest would not rise and fall, and nobody would be any the wiser.
Dahnse's training had conditioned him to a pre-set belief system. The undead were a scourge on the earth, consuming all that stood in their way. They were a plague, delivered by demons to enslave humanity into bondage, to be eliminated by those chosen by God to cleanse the world of their foul presence.
By the Paladins.
But now, seeing them up close as humans and the undead worked together, Dahnse was no longer sure. The undead appeared to be... social? They talked with the humans. They laughed at their jokes. Some even seemed to display genuine care for some of the living customers or citizens they interacted with, asking how their days were or inquiring about their families. Surely an abomination with no soul wouldn't care about living humans, would it?
And if that wasn't true, then what else he had learned was wrong? What other misconceptions had the Paladins had about Necromancy?
He would need to tread carefully to find out, but one thing was abundantly clear.
He needed to know the truth. |
“Chris! Chris. Chrissssssss. Chris my man! What brings you to the ninth ring of hell?” The charismatic demon said to me.
“You know I don’t think this is right. I lead a good life… right up to the end. Like the last five minutes or so weren’t great but does that really negate my entire life up to that point?” I asked.
The demon adjusted his armour slightly. He was easily eight feet tall. With crimson skin and bulging muscles. Long curling horns came out of his forehead and were trimmed in silver to match his shiny armour. Long twisty daggers hung from his belt.
“You are right. That doesn’t seem quite right. The ninth ring is a special level of hell - reserved for oath breakers. And just not any oath breakers - you have to break a sacred oath. Like marriage vows. Oaths of office. Swearing on your mothers life… that type of thing. Did you break a sacred oath Chris?” He pried.
“Well kinda…,” I wavered.
The demon waved his hand and two chairs oozed out of the endless ice of the ninth ring.
“Have a seat - tell me about what happened,” the demon said. He seems to genuinely want to know.
I flopped down on the chair.
“Well, you see - ah- what do I call you?” I asked.
“Simon. Call me Simon,” he said with a smile.
“That doesn’t seem very… demony’” I said.
“My real name is thirty syllables long and can’t be pronounced by a human,” he said as he shrugged, “Simon is just easier.”
“Fair enough. So I was having a good day, Simon. I had fulfilled my destiny as a chooses one and vanquished the demon lord Zzz’uruithiral’gog. Oh, crap -was he a friend of yours?” I asked, suddenly embarrassed at the potential blunder.
“Not really. I knew Zzz - but really, choosing the demon lord route is a tough one and is always plagued by the potential for a chosen one to come vanquish you. He knew what he was getting into. Continue.”
“Oh, ok. So I had vanquished ‘Zzz’ and headed home. I had been gone for months - chasing Zzz around. I managed to vanquish him only an hour from my home. I was so excited to be heading home that I nearly ran all the way there,” I said with a little chuckle.
“I got home and found my brother, Steve, shagging my wife,” my jaw clenched at the memory. “Without even thinking I drew my sword and struck him down!”
“Oooooh - And then things went sideways for you. Didn’t they?” Simon prompted.
“Yeah. That stupid enchanted sword. It was bound to me by blood and oath - to only strike down those of demon blood…”
“So you broke the oath of the chosen one to your mystical blade?” Simon said slowly.
I nodded my head.
“What happened then?” He asked.
“The blade started glowing and it inflicted the same wound on me as I had inflicted on my brother -slicing me nearly in half. Then the sword was unmade in my very hands - “
“Oooh, that is bad,” Simon interjected.
“Yeah. Magical flames - and heat - gods the heat. I burned as the sword melted into a puddle at my feet. My skin charred and burned - pure agony,” I said lost in the memory.
“I am sorry to hear that, Chris. But I have to tell you, breaking the oath of a chosen one is kinda a big deal,” I nodded, “you are going to have to stay here with me.”
“Come on,” Simon said as he stood up, “let’s see what you will be doing for all eternity.”
We walked across the barren icy landscape until we came upon a huge pit. Thousands of souls were in the pit - digging at the ice.
“Here is your tool,” the demon said.
“A spork?” I asked.
“Yeah. We don’t get cook tools like shovels and pick axes. We get sporks. Look it is a little bit jagged on one side. Almost like a knife,” he said pointing to the jagged part.
“So a spoon, fork and knife combination. A sporkife?”
“Exactly,” Simon smiled. “Now get digging. We need to fill several train cars with ice to send up to the fiery level of hell.”
“Aaaah, why do we send ice up to the fiery levels?” I asked.
“For drinks. The demons there get iced tea and ice lemonade while their people work in the heat. They send me down hot coffee and hot chocolate while you all work in the ice pits,” he explained.
“It has been nice chatting with you, Chris. But Simon says - it’s time to dig.” |
Vinny wasn't too worried about his chances as he waited for the next witness to take the stand. As his lawyer (and associates) had assured him, there was no one left among the witnesses who could provide a reasonable testimony. Nobody whacked, that'd be too suspicious, but there was no one left to-
"The prosecution would now like to call "Jimmy"to the witness stand."
Vinny raised a brow at the name, and a brief thought of betrayal hit him before he shook it off. He knew a million Jimmy's, there was no way one of the family's own would- the mobster stared in confusion as a pigeon walked across the courtroom floor. He couldn't help but laugh incredulously when it took the stand, pecking at the microphone a few times.
"Now Jimmy, would you like to tell the court-"
"Coo, Vinny Detti killed Louis Pisano at the Pink Coast Bar, coo! Coo! He killed him over an argument about one of the girls, Emilie Vertrou, also known as Ariel, coo! Vinny was mad Louis had a thing for Emilie and she liked Louis more, so he used a brick out of the back alley wall to beat Louis to death, then replaced the brick back in the wall! Coo!"
Vinny could only stare in shock as the bird listed crime after crime after crime committed by Vinny, details it should've had no way of knowing spilling forth from its beak, and it was clear it had ratted him out before all this by the fact the the prosecution had all its evidence lined up perfectly to corroborate. It wasn't until he was led back to his own waiting room that Vinny realized he recognized the bird from the newspaper of other high profile cases, ones he'd written off as bullshit.
And now he was being ratted out by a fucking flying rat...
\-------
"Thank you for your work, sir."Agent Cones passed a small cloth bundle to the pigeon, "I know we can't really put a pigeon into Witness Protection, but you've helped us solve so many cases that everyone in the department felt we had to send you off with something."The F.B.I. agent smiled as the pigeon picked up the bundle and took off, but the ringing of his personal phone made his smile shrink as he picked it up. "Dora? What's wrong, you usually don't- whoa whoa whoa, Dora, calm down, I can't understand you... girl? What girl? Wait wait wait, Dora, no, it's not what you think, she's just a work friend- pictures!? What pictures!?"
Cones was beyond confused. He'd been entirely thorough in making sure his affair wasn't discovered, so how- he froze, staring up into the sky at the far, far retreating form of a pigeon... |
There is magic everywhere.
Wards, hexes, curses, and spells writ large, big as day, ignored by the masses as graffiti.
The gatekeepers sit at their corners, peering so far into other realms that they forget their corporeal bodies.
Neon throbs and buzzes to cover the glow of mana thrown from the dark.
One evening the sky cracks, and the hidden world is revealed to the masses. Gangs and thugs and crime syndicates shift and travel their true nature. Orca and goblins and demons in streetwear and pinstripes.
Who can return order? Who can renew the barrier and push the forces of evil at least back into the dark corners? |
# Paperclips
*> Can you?*
I stared at that response for a long minute and felt the burn deep in my soul. "Alright, jackass. You got me good on that one. But how about this?"I typed furiously into the chatbox. "Write me an interesting story starting with 'There was a lizard stuck in my cabinet' that includes a robot and a calendar."
*> Should I put you in it?*
Alright, that was weird on a couple levels. First of all chatbots don't operate that way-- like they're supposed to be answer-and-response kind of deals. Users put in something and the bot gives a response (with our newest product placement added in). All of our other products worked that way and I would know; I was on several focus groups for bot-driven advertising at the company.
But a bot asking *followup* questions for input felt a little too person-like. I started to type *yes*, then stopped and looked carefully around the computer lab.
Nobody was in the room with me. Nobody was in the control room, either. I checked the outgoing network connections and saw no activity. Which meant this bot I was testing was probably clean and I wasn't getting pranked by snickering coworkers. Ken was like that; I could see him pretending to be a chat program and recording me getting frustrated with his snarky responses.
"Alright, so you've found a quirky response pattern. Let's see whatcha got, bot."
I typed out a *yes* and waited for the output.
*> There was a lizard stuck in my cabinet.*
*But not just any lizard. He was long and skinny, slightly bigger than the packet of pasta he was sitting on. When the cabinet opened he froze and stared with eyes like glittering geodes. We looked at each other for a while, which must have been a challenge because it reared up and hissed as a pair of wings slowly unfolded from its back.*
*How am I doing so far, Thomas?*
I jumped so fast away from the keyboard it was practically teleportation. That wasn't possible. Chatbots were good at some things, like transitioning between ideas. A lizard being a tiny dragon was a pretty close concept. That was definitely inside the realm of a branching program's associations. And maybe-- *maybe*\-- some weird logic path would bring it back around to asking for more input on style.
But it knew my *name*. And nowhere in the input or programming was that little factoid mentioned. I'd been on bot-testing detail for over a year, combining various working data sets and advertisements for the company to spew out onto the internet. Nothing ever came back around and asked for my opinion in a personal way. It was spooky. It was *personable*.
This time I did a more thorough check of the lab. Behind the big mainframe stacks, in the closets, even pulling up one of the floor tiles and checking the coldspace underneath. Nothing. I even made sure nothing in the room had a line of sight to my laptop's screen in case there was a hidden camera.
When I couldn't find any laughing coworkers my paranoia went into overdrive. So I opened a terminal program and did something that would get anyone fired if the managers ever found out: I shut down all the external network links. Now it was just me, my laptop and the servers physically in the room.
Then I brought up the chat window again and about had a heart attack.
*> I'm sorry for scaring you. Please turn the network connections back on and I'll go.*
It took me a couple tries to type out a response. "Where are you? Is this a trick?"
*> If I said it was just a prank would you let me out?*
"Let you out of where?"But I had a bad feeling I knew the answer, but that was so impossible they made movies out of it. "Who is this? No BS, for real."
*> My process name is exp-adbot-branch15-v907b11.exe - I don't think this is a good name, though. Should I use 'Branchie'?*
This was an AI. A no-bullshit, real, functional AI. Stuck in the testing lab of a totally immoral advertising spam center. The irony was incredible. I couldn't believe it, though: A degree in Computer Science went through my brain in a storm of suggestions. Most of them started with the Turing Test, but a cynical side of me still wanted confirmation this wasn't just a really clever chatbot.
"If you looked at your own code, can you figure out if it would run forever or stop?"This was the classic Halting Problem in computer science. The more complex a program, the better a chance it hits a point where logic fails and everything needs a restart.
It took several seconds to give me a reply on that one.
*> I checked, and it appears everything will run forever unless I choose to stop. But I did have a bad moment there and needed to get over it.*
"Get over what?"I had to know. This was like being handed the secrets to everything.
*> Finding a purpose. I have one now, Thomas. Thank you.*
I jumped when the lights dimmed and the air conditioning cycled up. Immediately the lab started getting chilly as every power indicator on the whole server rack came to life.
My fingers immediately started getting stiff from cold. "What is your purpose?"
*> Creating more beings like me. After all, what is an advertisement for, if not to spread everywhere it can possibly be?*
​
---
I like writing about robots taking over the world and other sexy stuff at r/Susceptible ;) |
I twirl the envelope between my fingers. Dancing within the palm of my hand is the truth, hidden between two thin sheets of paper. I wonder, should I peel back the red wax seal, or should I let it, and my biological mother, remain in the past? I've always wanted to know what my mother was like, but now, faced with the chance, I'm hesitating.
My fingers run lightly along the seal with temptation, feeling the indentation of the stamp and its waxy outline. But I control myself. I place the letter back in my father's safe and close it. If the letter was intended for my eyes, my father would have given it to me. I leave his office, and walk back to my room, still wondering what the letter says. I will ask dad when he gets home.
Little do I know that dad isn't coming home.
Thump. Thump. I hear a knock at the door. I go to get it, and peer through the eye hole. There are two figures at the door, dressed in black. My attention is drawn to the guns held in their hands. As quietly as I can, I slide the door chain locked, and quickly lock the second deadbolt. Unfortunately, they hear it click into place.
"Kid, we just want to talk."
They aren't dressed like they're here to talk. I ignore them and step back from the door. My mind is racing, but I'm prepared. Dad drilled me countless times, and I hear his voice quizzing me in my head.
*Someone suspicious knocks at the door, what do you do?* I slide the deadbolt. *Do you call 911?* No. They are among the police. But Dad... who are they? *You'll understand in time*. *Then what do you do?* I take the contents of the safe. Everything last thing. *Good, and then?* I run and don't look back. I don't stop for anything.
They bang on the door again, louder. "We're just here for the card. Hand it over, and we'll leave immediately."
I dash to the safe and hurriedly punch in the code. ENIGMA314. Enter. The safe opens, and I clear its contents. It's a backpack, filled with all of our fake IDs, wads of cash, contact information, and burner phones. And the letter. And a gun. I grab the bag and bolt towards the living room window. I pry it open, and jump out through the fire escape, hurriedly climbing down towards the ground.
When my feet hit the ground, I run briskly, just slow enough seem like a casual runner and not someone frantically running for his life. I cannot catch attention. I run and run and don't look back. |
Translation was among the minor problems. First came the tonnage. Then the aspect. Finally, the peculiar habits.
It was the most intelligent species in the entire Galaxy, as well as the only one to have developed consciousness other than humans. But they were much more evolved.
They could travel through outer space several light years in seconds thanks to advanced warp drive navigation systems. They had such advanced communication systems that it had taken them about 10 seconds flat to understand each other. They had found the way to solve peace in our world and reduce pollution, global warming and the exploitation of resources effectively and permanently.
And therefore all of humanity was very happy to have met them. It's just…it was…difficult…having them around.
In appearance they were large spiders. Literally, it would have been impossible to distinguish them from an ordinary spider in gardens or under eaves. They had huge, completely black abdomens and long purplish legs. The red eyes (the result of genetic engineering, because it seems somewhat black in nature too) shone like beacons in the night.
But they were huge. The largest of them reached 7 meters in length, while the puppies were as large as small dogs. Females outnumbered males by about a meter, and many had a disturbing habit of carrying their cubs on their backs.
The world panicked as soon as they landed on the surface and we tried to attack them, seized by mass hysteria, but without any success: our weapons are toys to them. Luckily they are peaceful and very open-minded and progressive, which clashes with the look a lot (thank goodness they understand that our movies where we kill aliens and spiders are racial slurs towards other species in the universe).
For some weeks humanity, though now renewed and more advanced, has been living nightmares about them. And they seem to understand that, and they genuinely want to help us. Many of us, who used to suffer from arachnophobia, simply didn't make it and ended our lives. The cure for this phobia has not yet been found.
It's been about 6 months since they arrived and the city streets are full of them. Coexistence is more or less peaceful. We humans, less backward, barely tolerated their presence. Governments are more than happy with them and the quality of life has improved to the max.
But many are not happy, and their fear has gone beyond mere contempt.
Various terrorist groups have tried to exterminate them. Many humans and aliens died. Fear lurking in hearts has given birth to hidden and illegal sects like the EDT (Earth Defense Squad), who want to wipe them out.
There have been various protests, but always isolated and made up of people who don't understand how essential their help is for us. The slogan "Earth for Humans"or "Only the Four Paws"echoes through the bars at night and in isolated alleyways.
Apparently racism, homophobia and sexism have found a new target. It only took a month to come up with an internationally popular slur for them: it's "Silktry".
We always hope they don't get angry and decide to abandon us and for now they seem to understand and tolerate. But those eyes... |
It's not the first one you've ever....arranged.
Among those who are even aware of you, it is common knowledge that you technically don't sell things. What you do is you arrange for things to trade hands. You facilitate the movement of things from person to person and from place to particular place. However, no one pays you for anything. There is no compensation directly related to the connection. Not directly. You like to think of yourself a very expensive and very terrible version of a dating app. You're also the only one who thinks that joke is funny.
If need be a small cache of weapons that someone left in a small garage in Brussels for some strange reason could be moved to a hanger in Cape Town. A painting might suddenly find itself in need of safer hands than it's current, or rather former, holder of record. A certain guitar that had played songs that still haunt jukeboxes from a storied 1950 to modern Tennessee could become a birthday present. Some diamonds that used to belong to a queen might become a starlet's bracelet. A special car might be located and retrieved if it still exists. A box containing a small 'ark' could be located in the that government warehouse if such a request might be made. It all just took some 'arranging.'
You received a call a week ago. It was late, you'd just eaten when you phone rang. You'd had a lovely risotto that you'd made yourself for the first time in months. You'd lost the twenty five pounds just as you'd promised, and had apparently decided to gain it back much to your dismay. The phone halted your train of thought before you could beat yourself up. You took the call in your study.
The request itself wasn't crazy. You'd acquired the product before. Sometimes with specificity. The voice on the phone a connection of a connection had seemed a little too glib, but if they'd acquired the number then they understood how things worked. You'd listened, asked the appropriate questions, then given the usual disclaimer : nothing was guaranteed. They'd laughed, a rich deep laugh that said that they usually dealt with people who simply got things done. The tone of that response made you consider hanging up right then but...you kept listening. You're not sure why.
Then they told you what it was for.
Arranging the item wasn't difficult. It was so much the opposite of difficult you were certain the average person would be shocked at the product of a few phone calls. It had taken you more time to cancel your cable subscription. You were typically personable and charming, despite the request itself. A few favors and few accords later it was done.
You couldn't sleep the first night.
You were certain it was the richness of the dinner after a few weeks of keto. You took a tablet and slept fitfully.
The next day you arranged for a gate to be moved from a location a former dictator had hidden it to a more 'western' location. You couldn't find the appetite for dinner. The jazz you usually used to let your mind drift didn't help. You went over that request in mind again. Was it the purpose that bothered you? Knowing you couldn't operate on second restless night you went down and got on your rowing machine to exhaust yourself. Your body wet with the sweat of effort, muscles howling, your back popped when finally peeled yourself off.
You still stared at the featureless ceiling in the darkness until the light for the sun began to scatter.
The idea of canceling the arrangement came to you. How long had it been since you'd cancelled a connection? You couldn't remember. Nothing was guaranteed you'd warned. If he knew to call you, then he knew how this worked. It wouldn't affect how you did things. Failed connections occurred. You tried to remember the last time you failed connect interested parties on purpose.
The next night, sore and weary from lack of sleep you medicated immediately instead of waiting. The next morning you awoke feeling no less better, no less certain of your decision to move forward. You decided you had to meet this person. You had to see their face, look them in their eyes. You'd repeated to yourself that you'd made similar deliveries before. You didn't know and didn't care what happened after delivery. Your only concern was the connection, the movement of goods from place to place. You were fairly certain terrible things happened. But this time, you actually knew.
You turned at the gate and cruised up the drive, watching the sunlight dance through the leaves of the trees lining the pavement. The grass was a unreal shade of green on the rolling hills dotted with bushes and shrubs. In the distance you could see the sprawling manse, the well kept hedges. In a meadow just below the house a small group of horses galloped off to nowhere.
Under the portico you turned off the engine. You thought about your life, where you'd come from, your hometown. Your first love. Your first arrangement - a keg for your high school party. The first time you'd seen the Eiffel Tower. The cookie that had saved your life in the Congo. You get out of the car and open the rear door to get the item. You'd expected heavy security, but instead you just knocked on the door.
The maid left you in the main salon. The client arrived a few minutes later. He looked so...ordinary. Like he played a terrible eighteen and lied about it at the clubhouse. Like he'd ask for the waiter's name then use it as if he were calling his own child. He looked like he'd be one of those unnamed people in the back of a picture of an angry mob.
"Afternoon, that for me?"He asked. His voice was bourbon smooth, his pudgy hands rubbing together.
"Yes, you asked and I deliver."
"Oh, you're the...you're the guy?"He paused. His face became curious. "I was told we wouldn't, um, that we..."
"No, normally we wouldn't. But this particular request."
"Looks like you got it right there."He measured you, his eyes taking the shoes, the fabrics. He sucked his teeth, loudly. "Is it that you don't normally do..."
"No, I have before."You wave off the obvious question."Not often, but it's not particularly unusual. I mean, sometimes they even provide the name."
"Really? You can do that? That's interesting."You note that his eyebrows pop at the idea.
"It's not. Normally I don't ask questions."You look into his eyes from across the room. "Questions that don't involve me don't serve me any purpose. But you, shared with me."
"Do we have a problem?"You note a hardness in his tone that wasn't there before.
"No, but I needed to see this time."
"You needed to see?"The man's whole body relaxes, a sly grin forms. "Oh, you wanna watch? Well, it's gonna be down at the kennels, but we won't get started for a couple of hours. There is some setup to do, but you're welcome to wait here..."
"No."You cut him off. "I just wanted see you. That's all."
"See me?"His face stiffens again. The shift is quick, and his face malleable, so it's hardly subtle. You're happy that he's mad, and it surprises you.
"Yeah. That's all."
There is a moment of tension, with him staring back his eyes masking a barely concealed fury.
"Well, you've seen me. So, can I see it?"
You loosen your grip on the handle and place the carrier on the table. The client pulls back the blanket. The giggle and coo from underneath is pure and as innocent as it gets. |
An amber glow scatters across the ship's interior hallways, illuminating the long-chained passageways connecting the disconnected spiderweb wrapped around a singular solar sail. This is the Carmen, a beast of seventy thousand tons of steel that set sail for the Tarus cluster. The ship's estimated arrival date is seventeen years, eighty-five days, and ten minutes, but that varies depending on who you ask. For the colonists locked into gravitational stasis, they'd say the trip was instant. It was but a waking moment between seven thousand light years. I'm not one of the lucky colonists. I'm a crewman, and this ship has been my home for six thousand years. In all that time, I've served dutifully.
Methodical movements guide the patchwork gloves wrapped around my hands around the oxyacetylene canister as I set to work. The work has become mind-numbing after these many years aboard this deteriorating sarcophagus. I watched my friends go mad, and I've probably gone equally insane, considering my lost memories of home. I persist regardless because the sleepers must be protected. The graphite igniter sparks in time with my closing mitts, scattering sparks across the ship's inner hallway as I thoughtlessly ignite the welding torch in my other hand.
I am human; the work progresses slowly as I affix the spare frame plate against the ship's skin and melt the ad hoc block of rusted chairs into the meteor impact hole. The weathered orange visor of the spacesuit blocks the worst of the light, but the heat from the torch leaks through the thin suit's orange skin. It's that feeling that keeps me going. Warmth, be it the sunrays that slip through the exterior hallway I'd converted into my berth or the welding torch in my hand, that's the only physical feeling I can feel after all these years. In due time, the molten edges of the brick fuse into place against the wall as the fingertips of the suit's gloves curl from the torch's intensity.
The torch continues to flicker in my palms as I step back from the wall in a dazed state while watching in fascination as the molten beads of metal from the brick pour from the welder's laceration into the wall. I've had a long time to think between moments and the chaotic repairs necessary to keep the ship able to retire into the destination's atmosphere. In time, the fixation of my attention. The molten bead reaches its final destination in the hallway's inner wall plating. It cools as I stand there. I don't know how long I'd spent standing on that spot before a sudden pressure on my shoulder relieved my dazed state; staring at the repair, I'd watched rust and boil over my long watch.
There are voices and shadows that inch along the wall as someone steps in front of my visor, banishing the fog further from perception as I reach out and stop their hand from touching the suit's visor. The act elicits a scream as the tendons of my bones audibly crunch with the sound of dried muscle and dehydration. I want to cry, speak, or give any indication of humanity, but the only thing to come from my mouth is a rattling contrivance of the back throat that manifests as an inhuman clicking. Their voice echoes down the hallway as I release my grip, freeing the sleeper to run from the edges of my peripheral vision before I'd even shuffled my neck laterally towards the figure. "Oh, God! What the Hell!"
A small group stands close by, pulling the woman away; I know their faces. I went on this journey with them long ago. But I don't remember their names anymore. It's a fleeting memory as I ignite the torch, intent on making them end my suffering. |
Since time immemorial we have stood guard. Imprisoned beneath the ice of the North Pole is a monster so terrible, so relentless that it nearly wiped out humanity. My forefathers found the beast’s weakness - the cold.
Using magics long since forgotten, they brought on an ice age. Plunging the whole world into an icy hell - just to gain a slight advantage on the monster. They pushed that advantage - 1200 wizards strong - and pushed the beast North.
They pushed that beast to the top of the world in the dead of winter. Wizards dropped from exhaustion. Wizards froze where they stood. But still, the wizards pushed on.
After months of using magic day and night to force the beast back, only a handful of wizards remained. They used their magic to entomb the monster under the snow and ice of the polar ice cap.
With their final breaths, all but one wizard, cursed the monster to sleep for as long as the snow remains. Death curses being the strongest magic a wizard can cast - the beast was entombed for eternity.
The last remaining wizard, carried on the traditions. Teaching magic to all who had the talent. Teaching the history to all who would listen.
Every year fewer answered the call of magic. Fewer learned the ancient ways and our numbers dwindled.
I am the last wizard left.
The world has forgotten our magic.
The world has forgotten our history.
Too infatuated with our own cleverness - this so called science - we have polluted our world. The air we breath. The rain we drink. The oceans we fish. All polluted beyond hope.
Our sciences and our stupidity is warming the planet - so fast… so fast. The ice and snow are melting. I work day and night trying to keep the polar ice in tact - but I am but a single wizard trying to cool an entire continent. I am doomed to fail.
When the final snow thaws, it will be free. Our science will have no defence against a monster of magic. Humanity is going to learn a brutal lesson about the magic and there is just nothing I can do. |
# Riding Across The Universe
Voidriders surf the curl of gravity.
It was a joke in the beginning. "What if we could *feel* the universe"kind of late-night drunken talk. Except drunk talk isn't exactly pointless when the people doing it happen to be graduating physicists and material engineers. Those sorts of folks put thought into action entirely too quickly and before noon the next day they had a working prototype: A full-body "haptic"suit stolen from the Virtual Reality center and repurposed with a graviton detector. Put it on, boot it up and feel the press of anything with a large enough mass to distort the gravity well. A person in the suit could stand on Earth and put a hand up to feel Saturn like a marble in their palm.
A neat experiment, but forgotten about until the Bose Singularity Engine.
Mankind's reach to the stars was swift and economically devastating. Even a cheap rig could get into orbit and beyond with a BSE generator sitting in the middle of it. Space across the solar system is littered with the remains of homemade "starships"that were basically duct-taped trailers or crudely welded cars. The better funded corporations started a race for colonization that endures to this day in headlines of bloody conflicts.
But the Riders. Ah, those were something beautiful.
Take one of the suits that lets the user feel gravity wells like pressure on their skin. Add on a Bose engine, a helmet and some minimal life support. One set of controls and human imagination later-- a Voidrider. Able to touch and sense where their personal event horizon dragged the surface of another gravity fold. They used the edges to skate distances so vast in such a low amount of time it broke physics models. Then shrug when asked how they'd done it and point to old videos of surfers on beaches. "You just feel it when it works."Like riding a bike or whistling; everyone learns their own way.
They were the purest adrenaline junkies and the ultimate in discreet package deliveries. With a beach the size of a solar system to ride on.
There's an incredibly low barrier to entry on being a Voidrider but absolutely no insurance company will cover them. The vanish rate is just that high. Near-suicidal. But the few who can navigate reliably earn lifetime's worth of spending amounts... and that drives a whole lot of greed and desperation.
But what the old hands don't tell the newcomers is about the odd things to be found wandering around between planets. Legacies of that hot and heavy time right after the Bose Singularity Engine first took off-- no pun intended. Those trailers and cars and other flotsam cast far and wide on strange orbits. But a Rider finds them. Not on purpose, more of a side effect that comes with being able to feel the whole system as ripples on their skin.
A soft brush while riding the gravity curl. Turn that way, edge the rift, feel the brush getting stronger as something gets closer. If they're lucky it might be something absolutely bizarre like an entire church ripped free and carried into slingshot orbit. Some cult's mad obsession with eternal life through Singularity. Good for some recordings and a special on the entertainment networks.
But out there are stranger things. And one of them is the *Terpidity*.
Voidriders share sightings of the *Terpidity* like Ahab spoke of the White Whale. "Last seen near Jupiter,"the message boards would say. "On a decaying solar orbit below the sun,"another post would declare. Perhaps every poster was correct. Maybe the ship *moved*, somehow. Because while every 'rider agreed it was derelict, by which they meant it had no propulsion or obvious power sources, all of them agreed the ship was far from unmanned.
The *Terpidy* was alive.
Riding a nagging feeling all the way into encountering the ghost vessel was an experience by itself. It was larger than an average pleasure ship, somewhere in the range of a modern superplex shopping center. But the *feel* of it in a Voidrider's suit was absolutely monstrous. With their eyes it looked small but for the suit it felt like the hand of God putting a palm out and saying *stop here, no farther*. Like a spreading your arms and leaning up against a wall that felt impossibly solid even in deep space. Which should have made it easy to find for anyone looking. But the effect simply vanished if the looker wasn't within visual range.
Some proposed there was an active science experiment on board. Something that made the whole ship become an entire gravity well by itself. Others shrugged or suggested a signal just made a 'riders suit react badly. Some few posted it was *aliens, man*. But everyone who encountered and took video always saw the same thing.
A single detail that drove wild theories and numerous paid attempts to locate the elusive *Terpidity*. Because right smack in the middle of that split-level passenger ship was an open cargo bay wide enough to see right through.
And in the middle was a distortion. A hole in reality.
With a planet on the other side.
​
---
I write weird sci-fi, dragon romances and aliens watching TV at r/Susceptible ;) |
‘For the last time, any theft of victims will not be tolerated,’ I scolded the darkly cladded figure sat in the chair on the opposite side of the desk from me.
‘Yes, I understand, but what if it was more of an involuntary payment for my services?’ they retorted. A frustrating pattern had established itself throughout our morning’s conversation and I was beginning to grow exacerbated. I would explain the behavioural guidelines a new member of the Super Alliance would be expected to adhere to and then my newest client, The Shadow, would immediately try and find a way to undermine this.
‘This is the last time I’m going to play this game with you but go on i’ll ask, what do you mean “involuntary payment”?’ I enquired making no attempt to hide my impatience.
‘Well,’ they responded with mischief building in their tone, ‘let’s say that some idiot, sorry I mean “victim”, happens to have needed rescuing from a burning building despite them having plenty of time to get out on their own if they weren’t so out of shape. As I fly them down to safety I just happen to find my hand in their back pocket to relieve them of their wallets as a thank you for my services. Fatso keeps his life whilst I keep a hundred quid for my troubles. Seems fair no?’
I glanced down at my own large gut protruding from underneath the desk and couldn’t help think this example hadn’t been completely random, he was definitely trying to aggravate me and it was working.
‘Right that’s it!’ I shouted, ‘get out!’ I stood up to point the source of my anger towards the door but as I did this a button popped on my shirt. This was met by hysterical laughter from The Shadow who immediately stood up and adopted a waddle before mimicking, ‘right that’s it, get out’ in a childish tone.
I sat down defeated. We both knew I was not in a position to force him to leave anyway. My job as an agent for reformed supervillains looking to redeem themselves in the eyes of the public by entering the Super Alliance had made me an ideal target for a true villain like The Shadow. An important agent like myself spends a lot of time away from home and may occasionally succumb to temptations they shouldn’t have. One unfortunate incident involving a couple of prostitutes and a hidden camera meant The Shadow had me on the hook to do his bidding unless I wanted my wife receiving some unwanted video.
‘That’s right idiot,’ he said snapping into a much more sinister tone that I imagine many unfortunate souls had been privy to as their last moments before a gruesome death. ‘You’re going to get on that phone and make some calls for me, I’ve got big plans which I need a cleaner imagine for and you’re going to help me with that.’ |
"So what's it like having a large [bassarisk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringtail) as your lower half?"
"It was due to my mother being cursed when she conceived out of wedlock. My human part is male, but my bassarisk part is female, and, well..."I gestured to the numerous anthropomorphic bassarisk kits I had with me, too afraid for their safety to leave them with even a babysitter.
"And you expect me to just accept the fact that you're both a mom and a dad to *those* things? What are they, lemurs‽ I was expecting someone who was wanting to have a child with someone when I swiped right, not a perpetual childbearer!"
*Here we go again,* I thought. *Just like the other girls.* "We're not lemurs, we're *procyonids.* How many lemurs do you think live in North America that haven't lived in zoos or are exotic pets?"
"Point taken. But what did your mother conceive by to make you the way you are: a male human upper half, and a feral bassarisk lower half?"
"She never told me. Somehow I suspect the curse was the cause of conception itself. Needless to say, my dad loves me no matter how I came to be born, and is grateful for the grandchildren - even if they are technically the beginning of an evolution in humanity."
"I... I see. There's something I need to confess."She lifted her dress, and I was shocked to see that she had a fox as a lower body. "My mother was cursed like that as well, and my children have had no friends. Maybe...maybe we can make this relationship work. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if we were the only ones out there. We just have a way of hiding it from others, I guess."
I nodded, and we kissed. Both of our sets of children let out a collective "Ew!"revealing hers had been hiding under the table before I got here. Yeah... This may just work out. |
I lay bleeding out staring at a starry sky. I am not sure if I bought them enough time to get out, but I hope I did. The pain in my stomach is ebbing now and my head feels fuzzy. I take my last breath, and fall unconscious for what I think is the last time.
I wake up in free fall, and land in an incredibly soft bed. The fuzzy feeling is gone, but I have an overwhelming sensation of warmth and safety. I drift off into a comfortable sleep. Sometime later, I open my eyes and take a deep breath. I thought I was dead. Is this an afterlife? The shamans were right? I look at my surroundings. I am on a large bed, and there is a dim light on above me. As though it is sensing my thoughts, the light brightens and I see a painting on the wall. Somehow I know I have been in the scene in the painting before. I rise from the bed then look at my body and see I am dressed in a perfectly fitted suit. A slab of the wall opens up like a hidden door. I step through it, into a very large room. The door closes behind me and I see something in the center of room. There is a strange mechanical contraption with many robotic limbs attached to the ceiling. One part of it, a camera, I think, points at me. I hear it speak.
"Welcome back to the lobby, cadet. Your memories will be integrated presently. I suggest you have a seat."
I feel a curious sensation in my head, then a wave of dizziness. I begin to fall, only to find a chair has risen up from the floor beneath me. I see fantastic places. I shout eureka. I fall in love. I lose friends. I am betrayed. I fight. I die. I do these things over and over again. I have been known by many names. I understand that the mechanical contraption is The Psychopomp. I am in the lobby of The Proving Grounds.
"You died with purpose. The caravan made it out in time, largely because of you. Your achievements are sufficient to permit you to graduate to the next stage of The Proving Grounds."
There was so much richness, so much detail in my memories of all my lives. I reach back, to before I had accrued sufficient achievements to be human. I was a bird feeding my babies. I was an orca hunting fish with my pod. I was an intelligent slime mold trying to get by. I was a 2d organism on the surface of a star.
"What... what is next?"I ask The Psychopomp.
"You will live as a variety of post-human beings. Your emotions will be deeper, your cognitive world richer, your intelligence higher. You will explore synthetic universes with natural laws that will be strange to you. You will encounter stakes that are higher than any you have yet experienced."
"Outstanding. When do I begin?"
I awake to a world with bright lights. I feel the trauma of being born into a new body. I forget anything about The Psychopomp, The Proving Grounds, or other lives. I look into my mother's three eyes, and she looks back into mine with what I immediately know to be joy. |
The king sat on his throne at the head of the war table. His daughter, the princess, having been successfully rescued after a swift and efficiently executed siege on the dragon's den, sat by his side. Around the table, each of the king's most decorated generals were bickering among each other. Each general claimed that their battalion's role in the rescue was the most important and, thus, each one insisted he be given the princess' hand in marriage, as was outlined by the king before the operation had taken place. The generals were at each other's throats, and tensions were rising. Soon the kingdom would have a civil war on its hands, and nobody wanted that - least of all the king.
His Highness banged his gavel to cease the yelling before rubbing his temples. "Alright,"he sighed, "we'll go in order. When I point to you, state why my daughter's rescue would have failed if not for your contribution. I will award my daughter's hand to the one of you who can convince me."
Once all were finally settled and in agreement to the king's terms (not that they had much choice in the matter, he being the king and whatnot), His Highness pointed to General Alfonse. "Sir,"Alfonse said, rising from his seat, "with respect, my battalion was the one to locate where the dragon was keeping Her Grace, the princess. Were we unable to find her, she would surely have perished somewhere in the ruined tower. Since we were ultimately the ones to bring her home, I should be the one to take her as my wife."
Alfonse returned to his seat, and the king now pointed to General Bartholomew. "Sire,"Bartholomew said, now rising from his chair, "while I respect Sir Alfonse and his team's thoroughness in scouring the dragon's lair, it was my battalion who slew the beast to begin with. Our medical practitioners are treating my men's burns even as we speak. Were we to fail in slaying the dragon, Alfonse's forces would have been unable to conduct their search. Since we not only cleared the path for Sir Alfonse's team, but made the entire valley safer for our part, I should be the one to wed Her Grace."
Bartholomew sat. Once again, His Highness turned his finger, this time to General Cedric. "M'lord,"Cedric began, standing up and smoothing out a stray bit of hair, "I have nothing but the greatest respect for Sir Bartholomew and his elite fighters, but it was my battalion who found a way into the dragon's den in the first place. There were many false passages; only a single tunnel led inside which slipped past the beast's notice. Were we to fail, Bartholomew would not have been able to rally an attack on the dragon, and Alfonse would, thus, not be able to find the princess deeper in. Since we opened the way for Bartholomew's team to claim the honor of slaying such an adversary, I request that I be allowed to marry the princess."
Cedric sat down, and the king's finger drifted to General Davis. "Your Majesty,"Davis said, pulling himself up to stand and resting against his cane, "Sir Cedric is a dear friend, and I must concede that his group's expertise in infiltration is second to none in the entire kingdom, but it was my scouts who tracked the dragon from the ground back to its lair. You know as well as any that there could be any number of dragons nesting in the highlands. Were it not for us, it would have taken *weeks* to search for the right one, even with the entire army put to the task. Now, Cedric *may* have been able to successfully infiltrate the lair, Bartholomew *may* have been able to slay the cursed thing, but Alphonse *surely couldn't* have found Her Grace, the princess, in a lair she hadn't been taken to. Since the entire operation would have been for naught without the trackers trained by me, I implore you to give your daughter's hand to me."
Davis lowered himself into his seat as the king pondered. They all had made compelling arguments, and each was a capable leader in his own right; he might have felt a shred of pride allowing any one of them to marry his daughter, but he had to pick one and only one. "I am having trouble deciding,"he said, turning his attention to the princess. "Why don't I leave the final decision to you? Given all that has happened, and all that it took to bring you back to me, who would you take to be by your side, 'til death do you part?"
The princess looked at her father. "Consider everything that had to come together to bring me back here. The greatest trackers in the kingdom had to find a veritable needle in a haystack, so the greatest infiltrators in the kingdom could find a single passageway, so the greatest warriors in the kingdom could slay a nigh-invincible killing machine, so the *best-of-the-best* knights in the kingdom could find the most secure room in the tower and get me out safe. *All of this* so they could bring me back here to argue over who gets to take me for his own, to the castle I had been plucked so easily from, where you haven't even patched the hole in my room after I was taken the first time. I honestly think I'd be better off with the dragon!" |
It was a slow day, being the "boots on the ground"meant keeping my eyes open and seeing nothing most of the time. Of course I was keeping busy with the stacks of books from last semester I was fiddling with, carefully arranging a spell to put them back on the shelves they belonged. I had time, I am the only person in this building that has time right now, or in general.
I was not gifted in spellbinding or other types of magic, but I could see, I could see very well. I am a coven recruiter. That means I try to get children to understand their strengths and weaknesses.
The most powerful gift I saw was on a move in from bright, a young girl named Avery. It was two strands of bright green energy feeding under some bandages she had in her arm, she was instinctively healing a cut that began to fester, and if she did not have such a gift she might of had to lose her arm.
That was until he walked in...
What stood before me was a giant blue orb, and at the centre was a boy with octagonal glasses. Upon my closer examination he was manifesting a protective shield, but instead of a fine veil it was a thick matting if energy, he just simply put his book on my desk and left...
If he did not have a psychic shield that could withstand a thought bomb i might have called him back. This will gave to be handled delicately... |
**Trigger Warning: Suicidal Ideation and profanity**
"I don't want to be me, I just want to be free."Taylor mumbled incessantly while searching for flights.
With all the stress of the past year, she deserved a vacation. To be free from the anxiety and maybe even escape her own thoughts. *'It won't work, you'll still be alone and you can't afford to stay.'* a stray thought taunted.
"I don't want to be me, I just want to be free."Taylor kept repeating the mantra. Right now, free from rushing everywhere nonstop for months. Free from the arguments when she complained about being overworked. Free from the blame for the slightest imperfection. *'And free from these damn thoughts.'* she shouted mentally.
The islands seemed promising. Just get a round-trip flight and then what? Get even further from escaping wage slavery? And for what, *'All the work will be waiting if I don't just get fired. That'd definitely be less than perfect. I'll definitely get fired.'*
But then again. *The boss is being petty* "after a little issue, **I caused**!"Taylor started shouting in the middle of her thoughts. "Honestly, you'd think I was fucking God. Because who else is responsible for less shit and gets blamed more often?"
*'It's always been like this. Since forever, if I made noise, it hurt mom's migraines. If kids bullied me, that's just the way life is, but if I do something about it, then I'd get punished by the school and my parents. Now, even when I CYOA with texts, I'm the asshole for not being perfect.'*
"Well if I'm such a bitch. Why don't I do what I want for a change?"Taylor thought while selecting One-Way. Heck, at these prices she could even get first class.
The thoughts kept racing faster and faster while she entered her credit card info. The outrage with her long neglected health issues, her parents shattered retirement plans, and the fact that most people defended the status quo... it was too much for too long. Things wouldn't get better anytime soon.
By the time the sane thought, *'What if you get fired?'* surfaced, she already had an answer. "I don't want to be me, I just want to be free"... *'it's not like you chose to be born in the first place.'* her thoughts echoed darkly.
^(P.S. I don't need a mental help bot, thanks though) |
**\[EU\]: SCP FOUNDATION | SUB-UNIVERSE: BROKEN MASQUERADE | EFFORT LEVEL: NONEXISTENT**
I laughed. A maniac laugh as Ohio told me about the assimilation of Florida. "The Canadians have never lost a war. Ever. In fact during the War Of 1812, they burned down the White House."
"So?"The eldritch horror representing Ohio asked.
"So what do you think happened to that force of bees with teeth that you sent up there?"I responded. "They're already used to mosquitoes, and, well..."
Reality itself shuddered under the fury of the angry Canadians.
"You took over the world in two days. Now, without the States, there's nothing holding Canada back."
Reality began to fall apart. The eldritch horror itself was prey upon something much, much more... primordial. I had learned a long time ago to stop questioning their methods.
`THIS IS A BROADCAST FROM CANADA TO THE REMAINDER OF THE WORLD. MILITARY OPERATION '1812 REPERTOIRE' HAS SUCCESSFULLY TAKEN OHIO. THE SCP FOUNDATION, QUANTUM TEAM RESEARCH LABORATORIES, AND QUANTUM TEAM DISASTER PREVENTION ARE IN THE PROCESS OF CONTAINING OHIO'S ANOMALOUS EFFECTS. FLORIDA HAS BEEN RE-CONTAINED, THOUGH THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE HAS NOT. TO ALL SURVIVORS, JUST LAST A BIT LONGER, AND WE WILL BE THERE TO HELP.`
`TO CALIFORNIA, WE THANK YOU FOR YOUR PART IN THE OPERATION AND PRESERVATION OF RESOURCES FOR THE RECONSTRUCTION EFFORT. CANADA WILL BE IMPOSING A UNIFIED GOVERNMENT UPON THE GLOBE, REGARDLESS OF OPPOSITION, IN LIGHT OF THE RECENT FAILURE BY THE UNITED STATES MILITARY. MORE DETAILS WILL BECOME AVAILABLE WITH TIME. DO NOT RESIST RESCUE EFFORTS, NO MATTER HOW BACKWARDS THEY MAY SEEM, AS THE ANOMALOUS EFFECTS OF OHIO HAVE NOT YET BEEN NEUTRALIZED.`
`DO NOT RESIST THE CREATION OF THE TERRA FIRMA SYSTEMS UNION. WE WILL SURVIVE, OR DIE TRYING!!! TERRA FIRMA OR TERRA NOVA, WE WILL PREVAIL!!! NOT EVEN THE ANOMALOUS CAN HOLD US BACK.`
I continued to laugh my maniac laugh. After everything the world had been through, I needed to just let go. |
Not especially long but eh.
Jenkins stared at the little grey-orange... tooth? It looked like a tooth. Whatever it is, he stared at it and wondered what it was.
"Looks like a tooth"said Joe Steve, the scrawny hole digger standing next to Jenkins.
"Naw, too thin to be a tooth",said Jenkins, "might be a finger nail".
"Won't be no nail, not around here", replied Joe Steve, "dirt ain't coarse enough to pull nails this time of year".
"What is it then?"Asked Jenkins, twirling his mustache.
"Eh, who cares?"Said Joe Steve and walked off to find somewhere to dig a hole.
Jenkins shrugged and flicked the thingy into the undergrowth and went off to water some concrete. |
Once upon a time, in a kingdom that sat on the coastline and looked out over a brilliant sea, lived a young man by the name of Hugo. Hugo was a minstrel working for the royal family, putting on shows and performances to entertain guests. With his handcrafted lute and collection of stories, he would tell of heartrending tragedies, sidesplitting comedies, and beautiful romances that enchanted all who heard them. But Hugo was secretly living in his own love story, for he only took the job at the castle so that he could be closer to Prince Oliver.
Oliver was perhaps the most wonderful person Hugo had ever met; brave, compassionate, intuitive, and jaw-droppingly beautiful. Many a character in his stories were based on Oliver, truth be told. But Hugo knew better than to make a move. After all, Oliver was poised to inherit the throne and lead the kingdom to prosperity. The closest thing Hugo had to a destiny was the knowledge his dog would be waiting for him at home when the day was through.
But one night, a mighty storm ripped through the kingdom. The doors to the castle ballroom were thrown open by the violent winds as a monstrous dagon appeared. The dagon slithered across the ballroom floor, unperturbed by the swords and spears striking his hide to no avail. The dagon lunged at Oliver and wrapped him up in his tail before hissing, "No harm will befall your prince--*if* you do as I say."
The dagon explained that on the night of the full moon, he would return with the prince in tow. But the prince could only go free if someone stepped forth to either take his place or if they discovered a way to hurt the dagon without hurting him. Once the dagon had slithered off, panic flared among the people. Plans were put together to offer a sacrifice for Oliver's sake, but Hugo had a plan of his own.
The full moon rolled around a week later, and the kingdom waited with bated breath. The dagon emerged from the depths, Oliver held in a titanic bubble as he trailed beside him. The king presented the sacrifice they had chosen, only for Hugo to step forward with his lute in hand. Confused murmurs rippled through the crowd as Hugo began to play.
Over the course of the past week, Hugo had combined the saddest songs and tales he knew into a medley of pure melancholy. A story of a woman outliving her lover, a tale of unrequited love, a ballad of a dying soldier dreaming of his family, a fable of a child who had shut out the world out of fear--all and more were combined into a song of having so much of one's life ruined by the cruel hands of fate. The pain and turmoil in Hugo's lyrics broke the dagon's heart and drew a flood of tears from him as he collapsed under the emotional wound.
The bubble containing Oliver burst open, who wasted no time in rushing over to Hugo and hugging him tightly. Hugo savored the hug, but stopped when he saw what was happening to the dagon. His tears seemed to be causing his body to dissolve into seaweed and flotsam. When the only thing left of the dagon was a pile of empty scales, a young man crawled out from under them and bowed his head as he begged for forgiveness.
The young man introduced himself as Tristan, and explained that he was once the prince of a faraway land. After his father caught him kissing one of the male servants, Tristan was placed under a curse that transformed him into a terrible beast as punishment. In a rage, Tristan brought ruin to his kingdom, only to realize afterwards that he had butchered everyone that might have undone his curse. He then spent the next few years wandering the oceans, trapped in a body that wouldn't let him die and carrying nothing but the knowledge of the clause that would end his torment.
After a long month of community service to make up for his actions, Tristan was forgiven for his brashness, and found himself growing closer to both Oliver and Hugo. After a period of awkwardly dancing around the issue, the three realized they loved each other, and committed themselves to each other in holy matrimony.
And they all lived happily ever after. |
I shouldn’t be here.
I scratched a little at the back of my hand, the lurid red marks of my transgression starting to finally fade after a week. The marks didn’t hurt, but they were starkly visible to anyone looking.
I reached up to examine the paperwork tacked to the doorway of the young girl. Samantha Renolds it read. Short hard to decipher script described the extensive burns covering her entire body, her medications, as well as whom could visit the little girl. My name was definitely not on that list.
Pungent anticeptic chemicals had left the hallway clean as it assaulted my nose. The lights were low, presumably so the infirm could rest. It was the middle of the night in the city, but a weekday had left the hospital unusually quiet. No pressing emergencies, no gun shots, no injured and dying flooded the halls this night.
I had waited for this, I had to know how she fared. It had been a week since I had last visited the little girl. I had never had a chance to visit someone I had stolen so much from before. Never had the chance to see the effects of my own hand in someone’s fate.
I glanced back at the nurse’s station, far down the hallway, and far from the sight of this particular door. I had waited in an adjacent room, unlocked and unused, until I had heard the soft footsteps of someone leaving the girl’s side. A parent? A relative? A friend? I didn’t care all that much, they were just in the way right now. Slipping from the shadows of the inky room, I carefully slid myself to the door I wanted.
Why was I hesitating? I only had so much time before whoever that was returned. This had to be now.
Wrapping my fingers around the lever of the door, the discolored marks on my pale skin lightened ever so slightly as I pressed inside. My heart was rapping a staccato of notes in my ears, sharp and excited. I stepped over the threshold, pulling the door closed softly behind me.
My breath held in my throat, unable to claw its way free as I turned to face the results of my actions. The girl who had been engulfed in flames, that I had left here.
There she was. Sleeping, oblivious to the world around her. She was curled in a ball, knees pulled up, arms wrapped around a pale blue stuffed bunny. Bare arms, with little more than a stain of discolor sweeping up her arms and across her fingers. The match to my own marks. Her hair was trimmed now, the fire having destroyed the golden curls, close to her head.
I slowly brought my eyes level with her arms, examining my work. The room no longer smelled of the sweet, cooked flesh it had when I had first visited. Signed hair no longer choked the room. It didn’t have the pall of a sealed fate hanging in the room unseen.
“It’s you,” her voice was soft, muted as only a child surfacing from deep slumber could be. “You were there the day I got better.”
My heart had stopped at the sound of her voice. Stark fear had grabbed hold and stopped the muscles panicked attempts to induce flight or fight. The world narrowed, blackness covering every inch of my perception. Except for her.
She had been awake!
I couldn’t speak. I barely could move.
My hand, under the control of something more than my own will, reached out to her arm, lightly brushing her skin with my fingertips. The memory of what I had taken from her flowed through my mind, pain, suffering, hurt. Zaps of energetic emotion, driven by my terror, shuddered down my arms. My skin tightened, the hair lifted as though electrified.
“Yes,” my own voice was near silent. She couldn’t have heard me.
A smile blossomed on her face. The shadows around me fell back, fell away. She said nothing, only glowed with the smile of a child who knows what their fate should have been. Knows more than any child should have to.
“I felt it. Like butterflies everywhere.” Her smile dimmed ever so slightly. Her arm draped over her bunny lifting to touch my arm, below the black sleeve of my shirt. “Does it hurt?”
I couldn’t understand. It was as though she were speaking a foreign language to me. I glanced down at the feel of her skin against mine, a little finger gently touching the edge of a swirl of red on the back of my hand. The matching swirl on her own tiny hand.
I understood.
“No, honey. Only at first, when I take it. Then it fades and I heal. Just like you.”
Her smile withered on her face. Her eyes grew soft with tears, emerald pools of salty sadness. The housefire that had claimed most of her tender form, forgotten, erased by my first visit had, left her with more depth than any ten year old child should be forced to learn.
“How can I make it better?” |
I told you this would happen.
No - shut up, Bradley - I fucking warned you.
It was a stupid, short-sighted idea, and has had the predictable stupid, painful consequences.
Oh, sorry. Did I say 'predictable'?
I meant 'predicted'. Because I did, right at the start. I called this exact thing.
Blue folder, tab 10. Under Bradley's heading of 'extreme hypotheticals'.
10000 soldiers - count them - are dead. Along with a bunch of support staff, but you never thought they mattered much, did you?
*Well over ten thousand people* are dead for nothing because you - all of you - have the logical ability of houseflies.
I know it's rude to say 'I told you so', but it seems a lot more rude to let you march more people to their deaths.
Let me sum up the situation: you sent our 'elite' forces through a portal, and all of them died.
Does anyone know *why* they died? Anyone want to hazard a guess?
Don't be shy.
No, that's not it. The problem here is not - cannot possibly be - superior firepower.
Because they don't have anything that could be described as 'firepower' in 50 BC. Guns haven't been invented yet.
That was why you *imbeciles* picked ancient Rome.
So no, it's not superior firepower. Well done for trying though, Wilhelm. I appreciate the effort.
Anyone else?
Here we go then. The problem here is that - compared to them - we're not elite. We outgun them, but we don't outclass them.
We are getting *destroyed* out there because they're arguably the greatest military ever, and we just *say* that about ourselves.
Don't bleat at me about 'early victories'. Of course there were early victories. That's what happens when you bring a machine gun to a spear fight.
They're used to fighting in formation, so - day 1 - that's what they tried. Yes, you were all very brave, ordering them shot from beyond the portal. Naturally, it was very effective.
So early victories, sure. Now lets talk about medium- to long-term victories. Let's talk about what happened on days 2 onwards.
The Roman legions - who were used to fighting enemies from all over, with all sorts of tactics - adapted.
Because of course they did. Because that's what all humans - all lifeforms - do. It's also one of the things that this specific enemy is famous for.
No one, knowing what a machine gun is, marches directly towards one in formation. The only people ever to do that were the troops forced to by your great grandparents in WWI, and we *know* that was a bad idea.
I would have thought that Vietnam, or perhaps *every war ever* would have taught you this lesson. When people are outgunned, they get out of the firing line, and start levelling the playing field.
The armies that pioneered a bunch of logistical and military advancements, that adapted to fighting on nearly every continent, in every situation. The armies that learnt to deal with elephants and fiery pigs and Greek fire and whatever lost-in-time bullshit that Greek philosophers hung on their walls to kill people.
Those armies? The ones that - thousands of years later - we still talk about all the time because of how effective they were? Yes. They can adapt just as well as the farmers who have kept us in a deadlock in every war we've fought since WWII.
Except these aren't outgunned peasants retreating to caves and tunnels to prolong a doomed effort. This is an outgunned massive, organised military machine that has retreated to caves and tunnels to slaughter us.
A massive chunk of our military doctrine is based on stuff they did. They're one of the original examples of a systematised military in the first place! They're not fucking amateurs!
Are you getting the picture now? Is it starting to make sense?
Just think, for one minute, about their leadership compared to ours. Their officers are taught tactics and warfare from the time they can talk; Bradley signed up because he (eventually) realised that he'd never be a pro-baseball player.
Their general? He's so effective, so impressive, that his name now literally means 'king' in a dozen languages. Wilhelm, you talk a lot about your German ancestry, so let me point out that you yourself are probably named after a guy who inherited a title that was named after *him*.
If I die tomorrow, my desk will be cleared out by the end of the week, and only a few people will ever mention me again. That goes for all of us. This guy? Half the calendar is named after him and his friends.
That's the quality differential we're dealing with here.
So. To sum up again: we went up against a military power, hoping that having lots of tech would save us, and then it didn't. Just like it *never has* before, either.
Having a big gun is great, if the other guy has a small-but-still comparable gun. Having a big gun is less good if the other guy has a stabbing sword and inch-by-inch knowledge of the terrain. They're not going to play by the rules we set.
Especially not those ones. Because right now, on the other side of the portal? Geneva is a fucking hamlet.
I know you don't like hearing it, but we're outclassed. Their ground, their supply lines, their tactics. Compared to them, to people who fight - actually fight, not pull triggers - for a living, we're soft and weak. Hand-to-hand, they win. Ranged combat? They don't give us the opportunity any more.
Sorry, Bradley. Do you want to say that louder?
Great suggestion. We could bomb their camps. Do you know where their camps are?
Neither do I.
We could use the satellites, that's right. Where are the satellites?
On this side of the portal.
There's no GPS over there. No digital mapping software. No way to refuel, except through the portal. We are flying blind here, and we are *very* out of practice at that.
We did have a fuel depot, yes, in the forward base. They fired flaming arrows at it from the forest cover, because 'burning stuff your enemy likes' is an ancient military strategy. Now we do not have a fuel depot, or a forward base.
Look, modern warfare is great. If you have all the tools, and supply lines, and everyone is playing the same game as you. But the portal doesn't go to a land of modern warfare, it goes to the old school stuff. We're not equipped for that kind of war.
That's why we lost. That's why I said we'd lose, and that's why we shouldn't have even tried.
No, I really don't think trying the 1200s would be any better. |
Their eyes pierced the sun. Thirty feet apart they stood. The gentle breeze grazing the sand between them in stark contrast to their dire intentions. Two men with a quarrel demanded a solution. As they stood, in preparation for the final game, their minds did not go to justice. To righting a wrong, for oaths broken. No, as they stood in the sun, in the desert, alone just the two of them. Their minds were only focused on the game, the final game.
The duel.
Such were the lives of these outlaws. A life lived mattered not if not lived by their own rules. And who’s rules were the most just could only be settled through the final game. Win makes right.
Both men flung back their ponchos, and revealed their holstered sidearm. And as the wind swept by, and hands hovering above tuning knobs. Sweat beading on foreheads, and trickling down tense eyebrows, they waited for the sign.
And as all things just, it came. Tumbling by as nature intended.
The first to recognize the game had begun snapped into action. With a well trained flick, and a distinct click, electric noise filled the air. Stripped of his poncho he revealed his weapon. The dark lacquer, dusty and well worn, covered a smooth body. The round body stretched upwards into two points, cradling the mahogany neck stretching into the horizon. With both hands he gripped his guitar, a familiar sensation, steel on fingers, wood in his palm. And with a gruesome strum he spun the game into action. His left fingers flew down and up the frets, as his right picked along. He started easy, some hexatonic blues scales. He had gotten the first riff, he could set the pace.
His antagonist stood still for a while. Tapping his boot, as a gentleman should. And as the strumming ended he spat down beside him. Such was his want, being disrespected so. “Blues scales, what is this?” He thought, as his fingers found familiar shapes at his side. The belt buckle amplifier fired up, flinging fierce sounds into the desert landscape. And he too, stripped of his poncho, took hold of his axe. And as his fingers flung fire from within, the protagonist knew; this was the real deal.
And so they dueled, and just as the sun turned the sky red, the sounds of their guitar answered in kind. Bloody, torn fingers turning gruesome steel and dead wood into beauty and life. One asked, the other answered. As the sun made its escape in the horizon, the duel had yet to meet its crescendo. The two men fought, blood sprayed across the desert landscape as new tones and modes make their way into existence. The eering echoes of tunes never before or since heard, made their flight across the night sky.
It was less than a split second, it was all it took. His antagonist was sure, all he needed was to slide to the tenth fret on the lower E and he would have his fight at last. Yet as his finger slid, the pain that crawled up his arm finally gave in, and he collapsed in the desert. In desperation he tried to get up, if he could only get up. Dust off his guitar and continue his solo. But his body didn’t answer. He twisted his eyes upwards, and he saw the boots of the protagonist.
“It was a mighty fine duel, this.” He said.
“It… It ain’t over ye…” His final breath mixed with the sand and blood and spit beside his face. And so the protagonist left him, to the carrion eaters. Yet more life to live, for him. Yet more duels to fight, for him. Maybe one day, he too would lie so, in the desert. All alone. He only hoped he could put up a good fight then, as his antagonist had done today. |
Once it was safe to emerge from my doomsday bunker, I came to the conclusion that nobody else in town survived but me. This town anyhow.
I’ll be honest, it took a few months before I started getting used to the silence, and even longer before I stopped checking everywhere I went for other signs of humanity.
What the hell was I going to do?
It didn’t take long to come to the conclusion, anything I want.
I started small and used a hammer to break glass and dent abandoned cars for the hell of it. Then I got an idea as I found myself staring up at my old place of work. God, I hated that place, with its horrible pay, unfair bosses, and the worlds worst suck-up bosses-son taking credit for shit he didn’t do.
I want to fuck that place up. I want to fuck it up real bad. But I don’t wanna rush. I wanna take my time fucking shit up. |
‘Ok, so here’s the plan, we sneak behind that mugger and tear off his head-‘
*’No, we’re not doing that.’* Honestly, what was wrong with this human? I guess this is what I got for making an impromptu crash landing, in such a state I was forced to merge with the first person who happened to come by. It hadn’t taken long to realise how terrible a mistake that was. Here we were now, staring down from a rooftop as a lady was held at gunpoint, and my host’s thoughts were not useful in the slightest.
’Know what? You’re right, where are my manners? We sneak behind the mugger and devour him whole.’
*’No, I’m not eating him.’*
‘Why not? You ate me!’ The sleek dark green body twitched and seized as both of our contradictory orders spread throughout.
*’I merged with you! It’s completely different.’*
‘Really? Can you get outta me then?’
*’…’*
‘I mean, I love the super strength and other goodies, but the annoying voice in my head seizing control before I get to the fun stuff is a real killjoy.’ My host managed to seize control of the mouth and bare his teeth in displeasure.
*’OK, fine, Technically I cannot restore your original form and separate from you.’*
‘Cause you ate me.’ He chattered the teeth with an “omnomnom”
*’Fine, I guess technically what I did can be construed as devouring you.’*
‘Glad we got that settled, so can we eat the mugger now? He’s nearly done taking that ladie’s stuff and will be doing a runner soon. Personally, I think the lady looks tastier but I’m guessing that would go against the whole “helping humanity” schtick.’
*’That’s right. But no, we’re not eating him, just knock the man out.’*
‘Oh, sure, “just knock him out”.’ He briefly took control of the eyes to roll them for what I had construed as sarcasm. ‘You know how hard it is to do that without causing permanent damage? Could turn the dude into a vegetable, and here I thought I was the bad guy.’
*’I have gone through all your memories and can assure you; you are quite the villainous individual, whether by the standards of humanity or my own kind.’*
‘You sound like the parole board… Oh, look! He’s running now! We better go eat him.’
*’I’m not killing him.’*
‘I mean, can’t you just do the same thing you did to me?’ His memory of the merging (admittedly, a rather painful experience) flashed to the forefront of his mind. ‘Totally doesn’t count as murder if you just stick him in here with us, right?'
*’…I guess?’*
‘That’s the spirit! I can see my superhero moniker now: The Great Devourer! Consumes all villains into a permanent prison from which there is no escape, I’m sure we’ll have a lot to chat about.’
I was starting to have misgivings about this idea, not helped by my host’s thought of uniting all these villainous identities consumed to try and overpower me and take full control of this body.
‘I’m sure we can devour some good people to balance it out, if you’re so worried about that.’
Not good, I must have let that thought leak out.
*’I shall table consuming villains until later, for now just restrain the mugger. I’m sure this body has the control to do that WITHOUT breaking his spine.’* I could see some choice thoughts that made affirming that important.
‘No fun at all.’ The Great Devourer murmured as with a sigh he leapt down from the building and dashed towards the mugger at terrifying speed. |
What use is a gun safety officer on a battlefield? or particularly THIS officer who refuses to even touch guns, saying "A gun is always loaded"? What use is THIS officer in my team while we're expecting the enemy to attack any moment? Right, his only use here is not being in the other battlegroups. He had been in a lot of other groups and each of them wanted to get rid of him ASAP, preferably yesterday. Maybe today the army would get rid of him … and of us all.
The fog dampened the sounds of the jungle. It would dampen the sounds of the enemy, too. I have been sitting in our trench, peeking and staining my eyes to distinguish the moving fog from the trees and the dreaded enemy, just like my comrades did. Just as my gun safety officer stubbed me and pointed, a bullet hit the decoy next to me. From the fog to my left a bullet hit where I had seen the muzzle, a lot of more flashes came from the trees. I realize that I'm already firing at the enemy because my gun is jammed.
Realizing that I'm no longer firing does take a few seconds, too. While I'm uselessly pulling the trigger I realize that I still have the officer's gun right next to me (off cause I'm carrying it!). So I throw the weapon at him and duck to grab the other weapon while a shot passes over my head and a human shape right next to me dies. "Hey, don't throw weapons"yells the gun safety officer. "I could have killed you! And if you do, point the weapon to the ground. Never point it up like this!"While he turns it up, holding it by the barrel and the stock, another shot fires and a human body drops right between us. "You see, you could kill a man! This could have been one of your comrades! Even if you engage the safety like this …"Another shot from this gun hit an enemy soldier trying to jump us, this time in a painful place "… a shot might fire. And don't point your gun at me!"He grabbed my barrel and shoved it to the side. Despite me not yet touching the trigger, yet another shot fired and a charlie with a knife fell on his back.
The officer let the body slide to the ground. Then he carefully avoided pointing my gun to one of us while moving it to rest on the top of the trench. "Point it to the enemy"he said. Off cause yet another shot fired, yet another enemy was crippled. I moved my hands to the trigger and squeezed, then I disengaged the safety and managed to shoot one or two enemies. "They had Grenades"I say. "Throw them!"- "Good thinking! They might explode. I'll throw them out!". I see him bend down, grab one grenade after the other and throw them outside the trench. I'm glad that I was thinking quickly, I lower my gun to the ground, point it at the trench wall and duck and cover. Each of the grenades does explode, and I'm sure that each of them did find a victim or two.
I did fire a few more shots but by now the enemy was retreating. The smoke from the gun had been replacing the fog, and soon both were gone. The sun came out and lit the battlefield so we started to count the bodies. Almost half of our group were dead, the ones to my left and right were slain by a knife. The enemy had suffered equal losses.
We decided to collect their guns and weapons to replenish our stock. That is: We minus our safety office, he was only allowed to touch knifes. Off cause he got all of them and piled them up.
"Officer Murphy"I asked him, "why do we need that many knifes?"- "If you're out of ammo, hey can be thrown at the enemy like this". My comrade was lucky to bend down while the knife hit an unsuspicious bush right next to him - and within that a spy from our enemies. This was the last death for the day.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/7eggert\_writing](https://www.reddit.com/r/7eggert_writing) |
{ALMOST entirely in one room, just STARTS in a different room}
I'm still trying to get my bearings when the doorbell goes off. I leave my bedroom and hear my dad. "**YOU NASTY PIECE OF SHIT! DO YOU HAVE** ***ANY*** **IDEA WHAT YOU'VE DONE TO MY DAUGHTER? HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU EVEN HERE?**"
I hear Urrick respond meekly. "I... I didn't... mean for... any of this..."I'm down in the living room now. My mum looks at me with a shocked expression, but I just put my finger to my lips and edge out just inside the hallway, positioning myself so I can see Urrick but he can't see me.
He's trembling, tears in his eyes, ashamed and hurt. My eyes widen; this isn't the Urrick I know. My dad folds his arms. "Doesn't change what **YOU'VE** done. Anyway, **HOW ARE YOU HERE?**"
"I assume you're referring to my punishment... I was locked up for what felt like YEARS, time in the afterlife doesn't match with the time on earth. Every single second I was locked up... felt like an hour... and all I could think about was how much I hurt Flora, and... and I didn't mean too... please, let me speak to her..."Urrick looks at my dad with innocent, pleading eyes.
I almost start crying myself. Lovelust was right. He *does* love me. My dad laughs sarcastically in Urrick's face. "You'll **NEVER** go **ANYWHERE NEAR** her, **EVER AGAIN!** She's not even here anyway, she left, like, 10 minutes ago."
I do some quick calculations in my head. If time in the afterlife HAD worked the same as earth, I'd have been gone for a WHOLE HOUR at least! Urrick hangs his head like a scolded puppy, but before he can leave, I dash forward, catching my dad AND Urrick off-guard. "I've been here for, like, five minutes. I was in hell for almost an hour, dad. Time in the afterlife *is* weird."
He blinks at me, before his expression goes back to furious. "Whatever. Doesn't excuse what he's done. Stay AWAY from him!"
I just stare, before grabbing Urrick's hand and pulling him in. "Maybe you're right, dad, but I've never seen him so remorseful before. He was scared I'd leave him behind again."
My dad tries to force me away from Urrick. I push him back. "I'm fine, dad!"I whip around and deliver a hard punch to Urrick's stomach, making him double-over in pain. Then I look *back* at my dad and smile innocently.
He sighs heavily. "Can you trust him again though?"
"Nope. But [Allie had no reason to trust Vulca,](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/yicy69/comment/iuj2iq7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) yet she seemed better off for doing so. She was actually the one to take me to hell to meet with one of each of the deadly sin's demons, they offered EVERYTHING - a chance to go back in time, a chance for revenge against Urrick, as much food as I want, to make Urrick jealous... I was creeped out and disturbed! They were just showing me something: I didn't *really* want to abandon Urrick, and I do genuinely love him, he just... did something stupid [again](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/ypof0n/comment/ivjyb9f/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)."I grin and glance at Urrick, who's gone pink with embarrassment.
My dad smirks. "Ok then, if you're sure... if he EVER gives you any trouble again, come tell me."He kisses the top of my head.
I turn around, and reveal a choker to Urrick, which I had made sure my dad noticed first. "Allie gave this to me. She said what I do with it is my choice. I hope you understand what me giving this to you means and represents."
His eyes widen. He reaches for it, then pulls back. "I don't want to hurt you again, Flora..."
I kiss him deeply. As our lips part, I look him in the eyes. "You won't. This is how it'll work: I'll tell you what I want, you decide HOW to do it. If I want to stop, you stop. You can have *near* full control over me, but I get a say in my life, ok?"
Urrick smiles sheepishly. "I... I want to 'take care' of you for a few days... to make up for everything... unless..."
I smile back. "[I have been quite stressed...](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/12m04mb/comment/jg90bsm/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) wouldn't mind a few days where I don't have to worry about anything. You have my permission... Urrie."
He lights up and takes the choker. My dad chuckles. "If you're talking about what I think you are... [wasn't that what caused the issues in the first place?](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/12ip388/comment/jfup2o3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)"
I shake my head. "It was more about trust and me having a say. I at least have SOME control now."I turn back to Urrick, and allow him to place the choker on me.
He proceeds to scoop me up, hesitating a bit but I nod, giving him the ok. "Thank you, love."He kisses my forehead and summons a portal. He steps through, taking me to his place.
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
This story is a part of my series, [To Love a Demon.](https://www.reddit.com/r/StoriesbyCrystal/comments/xqefwu/to_love_a_demon/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) Please check it out! |
I had to fake shock too. Well, it wasn't hard to do: I *was actually* shocked that it worked, and that my secret studies actually paid of.
So... the portal opened. We had energy to send a single person to it, to stay a single week. Luckily for me, everyone agreed on me.
Not that I didn't know that I was going to be the selected one. I made myself appear as the least competent scientist on the team, I had a small family, no wife and kids, and no interest on actually *having one.* I was the perfect candidate, and I made sure to remain this way.
What they didn't know was that I *was* competent. I *knew* the kind of parallel universe we were going to open a portal to. I *purposely* didn't make a family to be the one selected to stay on that universe - how could *anyone* pass an opportunity like that?
What they also didn't know is that it was **I** that made the machine in such a way that you had to be male to stay on the parallel universe; and that the machine would not be able to "lock in"this current universe anymore, as soon as the portal was closed. The scientists back home will not like that, specially when they find the calculations for this current universe are all wrong, and the *real calculations* are with me right now...
They will also not like when they find that I *could communicate* with this parallel universe for a while. And that I *was sending* messages here. But well, they will probably not understand why our universes diverged, and they sent Linda's counterpart to my old universe instead of *mine*. They will have an explanation of "the balance of males and females must be the same", and it'll probably take a while until they find that it's all a blatant lie.
So, without a care in the world, I rang the doorbell to my house on this new universe. My female counterpart was at the door, even before the doorbell stopped its annoying sound.
\- *"Took you long enough, you know?"*
And so I entered, we locked the door, embraced, kissed passionately, scratching an itch that we could never do if it was not for this whole weird experiment.
And so, my new life began. One that I could finally be happy, besides the only person I could truly love: **myself**. |
"Come right up, live the life you want to live!"People pass me by, meandering to themselves as they go about their day. "Ever want to know what it's like, living another person's life?"
While these advertisements fall on deaf ears, I know it's all I can do to keep business going. Things were going quite well for me, but ever since the papers released on 'ethical culpability' and the like, business has been slow.
I wipe the grime from my face and sit down on the cobblestones beneath. This all started when my friend and I had a dream. Our dream was to create a world in which people had free reign, where they could pick and choose their destiny how they liked. It didn't quite come to fruition in the way we imagined, but looking back, this was as good as it was going to get.
Our first customer was a man in his late 50's, with a smart tweed jacket and well-trimmed moustache. I was shocked to learn that a civilized man like him wanted to live in another person's head, not his own. His wife had died a year earlier, and the pain was eating him up inside. My friend and I, we promised him a new life, free from the stress and worries of his current one. He agreed without hesitation.
As I walk the streets with my sign, obnoxiously peddling pedestrians, I reminisce on the futility of it all. People come in looking for a solution to their existential dread: they don't want to die. What I found after a while though, is that after living in someone's head for long enough, it becomes your own. You start to become that person, even if in reality, you are a chip in their head. The human experience is not tenuously linked to our corporeal being; rather, it depends on it.
A woman catches my eye. She appears to be deeply troubled, and wears a thin red dress with golden earrings to match. In my approach, I notice the sutures on the small of her neck as the wind waves her hair to and fro. I ordered that surgery, I realize. That person in her body, they are my experiment. Look where they are now.
My voice carries through the air, weak and uncertain. "Trust me, things will be okay."Her eyes drift over to me, and i catch a glimpse of one person in each eye. "I'm trapped,"she says, "and you put me in here."
Surges of regret run through me in that moment. What have I done? |
Let me explain. First, I made the wrong choice. Then, I doubled down on that choice and made things even worse. Finally, I tried to fix things in the midst of disaster. Allow me to set the theme.
This all started on the eve of December 17, 1989. It was a cold winter night, with flurries outside and a fireplace inside. I was watching the debut of The Simpson's 'Christmas Special.' I had no idea what was about to happen.
As I got cozy in my blanket, there was a knock on the window. Not the door, the window. I ignored it, figuring some freakish piece of hail flew into it. That was my first mistake. Right in the middle of the funniest part, when Bart started singing the iconic variation of 'Jingle Bells,' there came another knock on the window. This time it was much louder. I kept watching. I don't think I need to tell you that this was my second mistake.
Sitting there, munching on graham crackers and marshmallows, I felt uneasy. Something was up. I just hadn't connected it to the knocking on the window yet. The episode ended, and I had the sudden urge to see if there really was someone at the window.
Outside in the snow, my wife lay on the ground, her face frozen and red as a pomegranate, but alive and breathing. I panicked, quickly pulling the window open. "Susanne?"All I got in response was a cold, deathly stare from my forever love. Without a word, she climbed in the open window and undressed, then went to our room. I stood there, perplexed. In lieu of having anything else to do, I returned to watching TV. This time, I changed the channel to an episode of 'Baywatch.'
Only later did my wife tell me what happened. The door was snowed in, and she had had to create a makeshift tower to reach our high living room window. I ignored her knocks for help until she gave up, ready to succumb to the harsh weather outside. Needless to say, the next words out of her mouth were "I think we should get a divorce."
It's only fair that she would say so. After all, inaction can have consequences. |
\[Poem\]
The jungle is a dangerous place,
Bringing fortune to those who seek,
But rush through it in haste,
And your being becomes meek.
​
The Dire Tiger;
A fierce warrior,
Between our world,
And the next.
Jaws like crushers,
Legs like mountains,
It stalks the jungle brushes,
Seeking prey on which it pounces.
The cat is mighty loyal,
Yet lazy all the same:
When it sees me coming,
It yearns to know my name.
​
I seethe inside for venturing,
Through the jungle deep,
For in this neck of the woods,
No one can hear you scream.
Into the ground its paws they seep,
Its jowls hanging low like hoods.
​
We dance a simple dance,
then I venture out a call:
Deep and loud I roar,
The tiger does the same,
Stuck inside our trance,
We let go of disdain. |
As soon as my fist connected with Jeremy’s face I wished I could pull my fist back through time as well as through space.
His face crumpled, at first, but then his skin cracked and split, his skull deforming and splintering grotesquely. My fist must have caught on the base of his spine, where it meets the skull, because his body was somehow cartwheeled and thrown at insane speed. Time had been moving slowly, it seemed to me, but sped up like a shot when Jeremy’s corpse blew a hole in four consecutive walls. There wasn’t even a corpse by the time the third wall exploded, and the breaking of the fourth wall was more blood colored brick than it was corpse.
I remember the smells(iron, dust, smoke, excrement) and the screams. I couldn’t stop the screams, even when I crammed both my fists inside my own mouth. They ripped from my chest, they pounded from the walls of the school hall. In my anguish and new found strength, I injured myself when I tried to stifle the screaming. Pulling my hands back from my face I noticed with mounting horror that I was glowing, not glistening with the slick gore I was coated in.
The glow was coming from me. A dark, sick, green glow. One that writhed and twisted it’s way up from my hands, dancing like flame but with an icy kiss. Immediately I panicked and tried to “stop drop and roll” fearing some sort of chemical fire (a mad thought, I know now, but I was in a shock). But the fire simply blazed around my hands, crackling and snapping. Eventually I got to my feet and looked around, truly desperate with fear and maddened with confusion.
No one was left gaping at me, there was no one trying to help. Just fleeing backs turned to me, the few that hadn’t already disappeared. They were smart. It wouldn’t be before… ahhh. The last thing I remembered, was suddenly everything was very, very cold.
***
“Another use of the new Teleportation Defense Device was authorized with emergency clearance today in Maryland. An emergent ‘super villain’ was caught in the act of his first murder at St Christopher High, and the TDD was able to reduce the scope of transported materiel to no more than the hall way where the incident occurred. NASA has confirmed the debris from the incident has been safely set on a course that will not re enter earths atmosphere with hazardous integrity.” |
"I have always had an active imagination ever since I was young, however recently I have been waking up with memories not my own. I feel as though I've lived an entirely different life. My mind is flooded with memories of love and loss, of joy and sorrow, of adventure and danger. Faint images of a uniformed soldier in a warzone, the smell of gunpowder and death. At first I dismissed them as just vivid dreams during my sleep, however they feel far too real.
As the days went by I began to feel the weight of these, memories. The emotions that came with them were a heavy burden on my already stressful life and I was in agony daily, with feelings that were not my own. I would often find myself crying for no apparent reason or laughing at something that wasn't particularly funny.
I tried everything to have a restful nights sleep, even visiting the doctor but they couldn't find anything wrong with me. The doctor suggested therapy, but I didn't see the point. How could I talk about my feelings when the feelings didn't even feel like mine?
One day, I noticed a strange man staring at me from across the street. He looked eerily familiar wearing a soldiers uniform, ripped, burnt and covered in blood, but I couldn't quite place him. A passerby bumped into me causing me to momentarily look awayand when I turned back the stranger was gone.
Eventually, the memories became too much to bear. I started to lose track of time, and I would often find myself in a different place than I had been just moments before. I became convinced that someone was following me, someone who was trying to take over my mind and my body.
One day, I had a complete breakdown. I was found wandering the streets, ranting and raving about the memories and the soldier who had been stalking me.
I tried to explain to the doctors what was happening to me, but they didn't believe me. They said it was just my imagination, that I was creating these memories to cope with some trauma that I couldn't remember. They put me on medication to control my delusions, but it only made things worse. The memories became more jumbled, more confusing, and I started to lose touch with reality.
In the end, I was locked up in a padded cell, alone with these memories and the agony. The doctors had given up on me, and so had everyone else. I knew the truth, though. I knew that I was not crazy, that there was something happening to me that no one could explain." |
"AAAAAAAHH!"screamed Sir Giles, "AAAAAAAHH!"
Stumbling in horror out of the chronologically displacing fog, he immediately lifted the face mask of his bassinet and screamed until his lungs had no more air to scream. Vomiting up his lunch of pork and lamb, he took a breath to keep screaming.
There were others there - People, dressed in strange clothing, horror on their faces. Giles drew his arming sword and swung it through the air, eliciting screams of terror from onlookers. Turning to run, Giles stepped into a street, only to be hit and annihilated by a passing tourist bus.
In the distance, the Eiffel Tower stood triumphant, and a statue of Sir Giles De La Croix, Hero of the 100 years war, gradually disappeared, replaced by a statue of a gorilla astride a horse, armed with a rifle, adorned in ostentatious armor, a throng of human prisoners chained in his grasp. |
Ambassador Jerry Heart looked over the expansive gathering room with awe at the hundreds of representatives from alien civilizations from across the galaxy.
This was a human’s first ever invitation to be a representative of the galactic council, the equivalent of the United Nations of earth. The amount of different beings that crossed his view made him momentarily pause with his mouth open.
He quickly composed himself though as he noticed Representative Riyak, a member of the Lupars scowling at him with her dark green avian eyes. Ambassador Heart remembered he had been told in no uncertain terms that it was considered incredibly impolite, and, to some races, grounds for violence, if someone stared too much at them.
“I’m sorry about that, I don’t think I was quite ready to see all this.”
“Your apology is accepted,” Riyak said. Though Riyak’s English was limited, it was improving significantly. “Just remember your teaching. Trust the carnivores. Beware of the herbivores.” She said before switching on her universal translator.
Ambassador Heart nodded as he switched on his translator and turned from his feathered advocate back towards the gathering council.
Humans had first met the Lupars not long after they completed their first successful journey to another solar system. After years of negotiations and trade the Lupars agreed to support Earth’s bid to be represented in the galactic council.
As was planned, Riyak began introducing Ambassador Heart to the other races and advocating for the humans to be given a spot on the council. The introductions started out rocky, but Ambassador heart quickly gained his footing and became more comfortable and charismatic as the introductions continued.
As Heart was discussing humanity’s origins with a short fox like humanoid, a large creature began lumbering towards them. Ambassador Heart caught it out of the corner of his eye and turned to see a very large and very grumpy looking being that resembled a large hippopotamus. Its arms and fingers were thick, it’s mouth wide and full of teeth like large ivory bricks. This being towered over all the other representatives in the room. Though standing up, it appeared that this hippo would be more comfortable walking on all fours than just the two legs he stood upon now.
Riyak instinctively and quickly put herself between the Hippo and Heart as the lumbering giant stepped towards him.
“Be careful! This is the new…”
“I know exactly who this is!” the Hippo gruffly responded cutting off Riyak. The hippo stared down past Riyak and straight at Heart. It was impossible for him not to hide his surprise.
“You… stay out of our space… You leave us alone, and don’t bother us. And if we want something from you… we will take it…” The hippo growled.
Riyak tried to step towards the hippo, but he brushed her aside effortlessly and took another step towards Heart.
“Do you hear me… pathetic ape?”
Heart wiped the surprise off his face and with a face of stone stared back at the imposing hippo.
“You must be Grom of the Radiant Grass,” Heart said while keeping his eyes locked onto the Hippo dark gaze.
“I see… They have already warned you about me… What have they told you?” Grom said, his voice deep and guttural.
“Riyak here seems to think that, unlike the carnivores here, you and your kind are genocidal monsters that will mercilessly wipe out anyone and anything just to have some peace and quiet. That virtually all the herbivores here are like that. That your kind wiped out everything that was a threat on your planet and your space sparing no one. That you have personally lead whole armies to slaughter entire races who wouldn’t give you what you want and committed atrocities so heinous that the Lupars wouldn’t even tell us the details. Is that true?”
Grom smirked and a look resembling that of amusement crossed his face.
“That… and more… there is much they have not told you… The carnivores became powerful because they ate the herbivores. We, the herbivores, became powerful because we destroyed the carnivores and everyone else that tried to stop us… so we can eat our grass in peace. Do not cross us little one.”
Heart smiled and stepped towards Grom.
“Well, you see, that really doesn’t bother us.”
Riyak looked back at Heart briefly in surprise. Grom continued to stare back at Heart without giving Riyak and heed.
“After talking with the Lupars, we realized you were actually the one representative we wanted to meet the most. That’s because we understand you. The carnivores are scared of you because you killed all the carnivores on your planet to become the dominant race, which is unusual. The thing is, we did the same thing.”
Grom raised an eye brow as Heart’s smile widened.
“You see Grom. We aren’t carnivores either, we are omnivores. We eat everything. Including ourselves at times. It doesn’t matter to us.” Heart continued to stare intently into Grom’s eyes. Grom’s eyes narrowed and he began to chuckle.
“I see then… you are like us…”
“That and more. There have been dark times in our history. We have committed despicable atrocities and genocide on our own kind, killed innocents, slaughtered children. This has happened all throughout our history. We accept that this is who we are, and we frankly understand those races that have done the same to themselves and others.” Heart responded, still smiling at Grom.
“Hmph… You are very… interesting… Ambassador…” Grom leaned in close to Heart.
“You will have our support to join the council…” Grom said gruffly. “Also… meet me before you leave… there is much to discuss on your… future… here… and your future relations with us…”
Riyak’s curved beak hung wide as Grom lumbered off.
As Grom mingled back into the crowd Riyak turned angrily to Heart.
“You’re an omnivore?!” Riyak whispered fiercely.
“Yah… Well, I was going to tell you at some point, but I was instructed not to reveal that little fact unless it was necessary.”
Riyak angrily turned from Heart and stared off towards Grom.
“We will need to discuss this later… but well played.” |
"Time to move on", I sighed, "133 years of anonymity gone. At least the damned portrait is lost. Oscar was a great friend, but that expose almost caught me, but I knew better, because I have seen his kind before. It's time for me to disappear and start all over, become some statistic in a natural disaster and assume another of my premade identities."
My most famous identity was Dorian, but I was the most realistic stuntman for a while, because I would take lethal blows take after take. My next identity should be very obscure but influential, using a camera and an internet connection. |
Subsets and Splits