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[alizaarches]

Master List of Proposed Chapter Titles: Mark of Athena

Annabeth - A Statue Declares My Existence a Scandal

Annabeth - A Harpy Compares the Argo II to a Shipwreck

Annabeth - I Speak to an Old Acquaintance

Annabeth - We Didn't Start the Fire… Or Did We?

Leo - I am Given Strange Looks by a Stranger

Leo - Aunt Rosa Doesn't Believe in Fortune Cookies

Leo - An Invisible Girl Directs Us

Leo - I'm Such a Bad Boy, I Attracted a Dozen Rabid Fangirls / My Sick Burns Bring All the Nymphs to the Yard

Piper - My Knife Shows Me the Future

Piper - The Wine Dude Recounts the Last Gigantomachy

Piper - Kansas Becomes a Coliseum

Piper - I Perform an Exorcism

Percy - We've Come a Such a Long Way, We Forgot My Cousin Brother is Dying in Rome

Percy - Our Friends Have Imagination Overdrive… Then Again, 6/7 of Us Have ADHD

Percy - We Take a Tour of the Georgia Aquarium

Percy - My Questing Buddy Becomes a Goldfish

Annabeth - My Mother Sent Me on a Death Quest

Annabeth - A Goddess Invites Us to Tea

Annabeth - My Boyfriend Drowns a Whole Bunch of Romans

Annabeth - A Fiery Owl Leads My Way on the Battlefield

Leo - We Take Flight to the Middle of the Ocean

Leo - My Stunt Double Flirts With Hazel

Leo - I Bomb Shrimpzilla

Leo - We are Interrogated by Fish Centaurs

Piper - Why am I So Inadequate?

Piper - We Meet the Starbucks of Ancient Greece

Piper - A Reverse Minotaur Criticizes a Book

Piper - I Happen to Be the 2nd in the Seven to Learn to Bullfight, What Joy

Percy - Dolphin Pirates Attack

Percy - I Duel with the Golden Sword

Percy - I Threaten My Brother With Diet Coke

Percy - One Last Date Before Everything Goes to Hell

Annabeth - Wisdom's Daughter Walks Alone

Annabeth - My Love for Architecture Becomes My Greatest Tool

Annabeth - My Ankle Doesn't Reply to Me

Annabeth - I Seem to Have Inherited Not-So-Irrelevant Talents from Mom

Leo - I Bond with a Romantic Rival

Leo - My Ancient Brother Teaches Me to Build Spheres

Leo - I Get Employed at Ancient Roman Mission Control

Leo - Welcome to Leo World, Possessed Armored Manikins

Piper - We Have an Untimely Birthday Party

Piper - We Visit a Haunted Shrine

Piper - Once My Father Told Me a Bedtime Story, But I Don't Think It Helps Me Now

Piper - Zeus's Nannies Attempt to Drown Us

Percy - My Comatose Cousin is Freed From Theatre Major Dropouts

Percy - We Fight Two Wonder Bread-Obsessed Pyromaniacs

Percy - The Twins Condescend to Mr. B

Percy - We Become Gladiators (Again)

Annabeth - I Kiss the Rear of My Worst Enemy

Annabeth - Chinese Spidercuffs Do Work, Witch!

Annabeth - We Go Down the Highway to Hell / Rose Was Right, I'll Never Let Go

Leo - I Pay the Price for Breaking a Cookie

[alizaarches]

You’ll never take us alive.

On Rooftop Row, the people mingled like brothers and sisters. A woman with a bulb-shaped cap and sand-colored cardigan smiled at a man in a white tuxedo and sunburnt skin. A plaited street performer took the hands of a floral-dressed sign swinger. A man who donned sunglasses and long dreads bought the androgynous artist a drink.

Rooftop Row belonged to anyone brave enough to walk the waters of intercultural and interpersonal situations. The shops lined along the street were as far and few in between as the people themselves. A tattoo parlor stood proudly next to bookshop, a furniture store shared a door with a pizzeria. The Row was a beautiful, wonderful example of different humanities meeting each other in perfect harmony. No one was unhappy or unfriendly on the Row.

An exceptionally unfriendly woman strode down the sidewalk. Long, bleached hair was curled in perfect, elegant coils; eyes as black as her obsidian pendant were covered by cold, gray contacts; heels stabbed uncomfortably into the soles of her feet, the outsole painted with non-cosmetic red. Her smile was an oddity, strained and displeased, and gathered confused but sympathetic looks. She ducked into Lija’s Boutique, the smell of fresh coffee following her.

The boutique was one of the many creative antiquities of Rooftop Row. The walls were slung with draped lilac scarves. The lights hung from the ceiling in spheres and lanterns, even a particularly enthusiastic gummy bear. Jewels were worn round the necks of the assistants, their hair wrapped in knots that rose high on their heads, their own clothing full of rips, clips, and pastels.

Near the entrance, there was a red desk completely swathed in Row clothing, stacked to the dark roots of the unfamiliar woman. She quickly hid herself from a cheery employee, eagerly glancing round the store for new prey to stalk.  

We swore that death will do us part.

The beautiful, wintry lady reached behind her. She unsheathed a small handphone and sent off a simple but affirming message to her beloved. She began to tie her hair into a tail, when the sound of a ringing bell surprised her, messing her process into a large, frizzy sandbags. A cool palm touched her elbow, and her pretty pink lips curved into their first, genuine smile since having been in Rooftop Row. She melted into his arms, giggling like a schoolgirl, unashamed by the prying, curious eyes that were plastered onto them.

They’ll call our crimes a work of art.

His charm never ceased to warm her heart. He reached into her back pocket, pulling out her prized possession: her Gen 1 Glock 17. He admired it for a moment, giving the handgun the attention it deserved, before passing her his own love, hidden in one of the many jackets he wore. He kissed her gently, ignoring the frantic workers that scurried like cockroaches.

He aimed her gun and fired.

You’ll never take us alive

Partners in Crime, by alizaarches

Summary: The Rooftop Row never ceases in its strange visitors.

Inspirations:

~Partners in Crime by Set It Off

~Harley Quinn and the Joker’s relationship

~Bonny and Clyde

~English writing styles, specifically

In case you were wondering, Blondie’s name is Faith. No amount of irony will serve that justice.

[alizaarches]

She descended.

She was a being of ambition, of never settling for anything less.

With a flutter of her wings, she made a decision.

Her thoughts whirred with the place she was bred from, the place she’d called home.

As she walked among them, she could never understand what it meant to be human, never understand how blood stains hands, and the need to be needlessly cruel.

She fell deeper.

She became the opposite of what she was meant to be.

And without another foot forward, without another step back, without a second thought or doubt, she made a decision.

She scarred her own wings, as beautiful as they were, tearing white lines into the gold she’d always known.

Humanity never deserved her, and she’d tried to save them anyway.

A mistake that turned her heart colder and her smile untrustworthy

She called herself Justice, the angel that could never learn.

 ***

She called herself Justice, the angel that could never learn.

A mistake that turned her heart colder and her smile untrustworthy

Humanity never deserved her, and she’d tried to save them anyway.

She scarred her own wings, as beautiful as they were, tearing white lines into the gold she’d always known.

And without another foot forward, without another step back, without a second thought or doubt, she made a decision.

She became the opposite of what she was meant to be.

She fell deeper.

As she walked among them, she could never understand what it meant to be human, never understand how blood stains hands, and the need to be needlessly cruel.

Her thoughts whirred with the place she was bred from, the place she’d called home.

With a flutter of her wings, she made a decision.

She was a being of ambition, of never settling for anything less.

She descended.

The Cicatrix of a Gladiatrix, by alizaarches

Gotta love some poetry because I have no long story ideas. This is a reverse poem, it’s entire purpose is that it can be read forward and backward. I wrote one the other day, but didn’t post it, and I liked this one much better anyway. The title is mainly for my amusement.

[alizaarches]

Liberty

MAGDALENA

She clutched her stomach tightly, cold in the autumn air. Her white cardigan flowed unto her thighs, her dark gold hair falling around her. Her thoughts were mangled, jumbled and disoriented, anxiety zipping through her like strands of wire lightly zapping her skin. She didn’t know what to expect of him, or of herself. The last time she’d taken a glimpse of her father, she’d been six years old, and her parents were on the last legs of finalizing their divorce. She could remember his gentle touch, the sorrow in his eyes as he informed her that Dad couldn’t stay anymore. His irises were the color of whiskey, a kind of brown-green that shifted in the light. Her mother claimed that was the worst quality of Magdalena, the only physical similarity between father and daughter. Among the whiskey-eyed girl’s thoughts was her stepfather, how enraged he would get the minute he discovered his daughter-in-all-but-blood was being ungrateful enough to visit her biological dad. She thought of Lila de Loon, Magdalena’s cigarette-holding, rich-men-loving, flirtatious mother, one that was known for her beauty in her youth and her man-eating habits in her older years. Magdalena thought of her therapist, who warned her that her father was mentally unstable and her desire to see him was only due to her poor example of a father figure when growing up. She thought of the last week she lived with her mother, the event that pushed her to finally see Silas Knight, the man that should’ve had his surname taken by his daughter, but was instead cheated by the courts—who seized his arrest as an opportunity to allow Lila to sign Magdalena as “Magdalena Wolfe,” not “Magdalena Knight.” She thought of what she would do when she saw him again.

“Wolfe.” A receptionist the size of a medium-sized potted plants strode into the room, calling her name. She wanted to correct him—“Knight, actually”—but resisted. Despite her refusal to use her stepfather’s name, she held no formal obligations to her sperm donor (a funny alternative to “father” Magdalena had heard). She stood from her seat, readying herself, and followed the receptionist. He led her down a series of corridors, each the same color of gray and each wall with the same evasive cracks down its side. Eventually, the cells stopped being barred rooms and began to be completely covered in steel walls and a slot for food. Guards became more of a mandatory requirement instead of museum exhibitions. The weapons were wider, better to handle the worst of the worst. Magdalena kept expecting one to break character, to wink and say she was getting pranked. The receptionist handed her off to a less serious but still firm-looking guard, who took her deeper into the prison. The sentinel eventually stopped at a door, one that held a plaque that read: #981. She gave Magdalena a very wary look, never saying a word, before unlocking the only way inside.

The only difference Magdalena Wolfe could see between the last memory of her father and the man in front of her was the age put on his body: his hair was filled with gray, his face was full of lines and crinkles. He was looking at his child like she was the undertaker, ready to take his soul and willing to give anything for her to do him that favor. He looked at her like he was hoping she wasn’t real. She took a long swallow, never hearing the door swing shut. A mistake on the sentry’s part or a test to see if Silas would bolt for the door or speak with his daughter, she didn’t know. If it was the latter, he denied the guard of her expectations. He said, “Libby,” in a very quiet, very afraid voice. The nickname he gave her when she was around four was Liberty, because he was once a history teacher, and he believed she would live to free those in need. Lila never approved—“Her name is not that of a dog, Steven” “Yet you call me Steven instead of my actual bloody name”—but, then again, Lila never approved of anything Silas did for his daughter. Magdalena wringed her wrists, accidentally showcasing the gold chain she’d bought with her only extra money: a nametag that read “Call me who I am, not who you wish me to be.” Silas couldn’t properly distinguish the lettering, not from that far of a distance, but he could tell the message. (Lila de Loon preferred “natural beauty”—and, in that, no cosmetics of any kind. Makeup, nail polish, accessories; she would never let her daughter leave in anything except who she “naturally was.” But, of course, this never applied to her eyes. Colored contacts was the only thing Lila allowed her to change, and it was no mystery why.)

“Libby,” Silas said. “Your mother?” Lila would be caught dead before knowingly allowing Magdalena to leave with jewelry on her person.

“I don’t know. I left home a while ago.”

“Why?” He approached her slowly, like she was a mirage in his endless desert of gray walls and psychiatric wards. She would disappear if he didn’t stride carefully, and he was nothing if not careful.

She crossed her arms defensively. “Wolfe . . . he crossed a line he shouldn’t’ve. It made me realize how much I hated the life they gave me. Mom . . . she’s good at smiling and eating and marrying, but not very great at being there for more than one hookup at a time. I left. She won’t miss me. I doubt Wolfe will either.”

“Libby,” Silas said again, like if he didn’t keep reminding himself, he’d forget her entirely. “What did he do?” Bells rang in her ears, a sense of dread dropping like a rock in her tummy. She wouldn’t answer him. She couldn’t answer him. Her mind was whirring like a machine, chucking thoughts and words into a storm that couldn’t comprehend enough to open her mouth. Never in her life had she looked so similar to Silas Knight: lost, sad, and full of unforgiveable sorrows. “Magdalena,” he said. Solemnity spoke a thousand volumes, with a single word. “Why are you here?”

Whiskey eyes couldn’t meet their originator. She stared silently at the ground beneath his feet, waiting for the world to drag her underground and end this. “Dad,” she said. She unfolded her arms and let them hang loosely for a moment. She pointed at herself, “Mom.” His mouth dropped open, and his irises filled with rage. He understood. He forgave himself for a moment, forgave everything he’d done to his family and his life, and chose to be a father. He pulled her into his arms, quietly cursing the foul man that took his daughter away from him, in more ways that he could’ve ever predicted. Magdalena, his Liberty, broke down in his arms, and, more than anything, he wished for liberty once more.

(He would kill the wolf himself.)

Liberty, by alizaarches

I hated the ending, so I rewrote it. Thank god for small liberties ;). Anyway, this came out of nowhere, as do most of my stories these days. I originally planned for this to be an alternate perspective on the zombie outbreak in A Tale More Complicated Than One Person Can Tell, like twenty years before Talon, but I figured that would be very, very long, similar to the length of that story. It’s a story that would be too long for someone who lost inspiration and doesn’t have much motivation to write anyway. I might still write the idea I had in mind, but not now. For now, this fucked up thing is what you’re getting.

[alizaarches]

As she pressed her body against the walls of an underground temple, she panted heavily, listening to the sounds of chaos and pondering how she ended up in this situation in the first place. She thought back to the Anchor, to her eternity trapped in a make-believe world. In the beginning, she’d believed she was . . . real, in a sense she had difficulty in explaining. Every day, she lived the same verisimilitude. She lifted herself off the fox-red of her bed, dressed herself in her work armor, and glided down to the bartending job she’d earned for as long as she could remember. It didn’t take long for her and the rest of the residents in this damn place to realize: There was nothing they could remember. They were animations in a silly game of virtual expenses, never to be people who lived and died, only NPCs to interact with and never to change a single thing about themselves, for themselves. She’d drained all substance from the revelers that drank alcoholic ambrosia and mused of their distant wives they’d never return to see. She’d scrubbed down the mahogany of the bar more times than she could count, absentminded and dreaming of an interruption in rhythm, of an angel sent from above to disrupt the bliss they’d lived since their sudden and forgotten existence. She wished beyond wishing, hoped beyond hoping, for something, anything, to break this curse. Her entreaty was deferentially rejected, until the estimated fourth year of their lives, when an outsider arrived at the homely, dragon-faced and ball-and-chained gates of Rynmille. A man, with delicate elven ears and thin, hickory brown hair, wore white, laced long-sleeved shirt, with an odd . . . identification hanging over his head. Suspended midair, white letters floated above him: CrackerJack, in simple calligraphy neater than anything she’d written. Mister Jack summoned attention to himself immediately, picking a fight with a royal soldier and collecting random strewn weaponry from the underground temples left by their ancestors. The foreigner quickly made a name for himself, gathering armor and gaining experience by killing the wolves the warlock nicknamed “the Fallen,” for their skeletal appearances. Jack refused to speak to the residents for a long time, including Deanna the Mixologist herself. He only chosen to express his personality to a few stragglers on the outer ring of Rynmille, returning a ghost elixir to the seamstress whose husband fell ill and delivering a message to the youth who planned to swindle the poor village girl. When Jack finished his avoidance of the main streets and determined they were worthy of their presence, he strolled into the Anchor like he owned the place. He traded out his ‘poor citizen’ garb for a mage’s cloak and an assassin’s hood, his irises responding to the magic in his veins, glowing brightly like the life Destiny chose for him. He spoke to every resident in the pub, almost obsessively attempting to learn everything of everyone all at once. He eventually made his way to Deanna, who only continued her aimless cleansing of her spotless counter and reassured herself of multiple things: If he was an enemy, she could be prepared. If he was an ally, he would save them all. Anything to intrude on their peace, Deanna reminded herself. Anything to free them from this fantastical place. He approached the bartender, smiling charmingly, and asked for a Yvonne Bloodsinger. Deanna’s eyebrows raised instantly, obediently mixing him the drink, before inquiring what Mister CrackerJack was doing in their quiet town, near completely unaffected by the war in the capital. Jack answered, “I was hired,” and when Deanna wondered by who, he only responded with, “King Eredion,” the country’s worst fear and the war’s biggest benefactor. She instantly dropped the subject, growing wearier of this guest Destiny brought them. He paused for a moment, changing the subject as easily as a broken teacup, sloppily asking her of her family and purpose. She dismissed him, dropping an ice shard in his drink and sassing him to next Sunday. He seemed simultaneously intrigued and annoyed by her, which were the two emotions she loved evoking in people. He strode out of the Anchor with his head held high, newly acquired information weighing on his shoulders, his rank still a mystery to those closest to him. A youth with long, spindly plaits reported to Deanna, a proud gossiper in her right, of the CrackerJack’s reasoning for being here. Spindly, known by her lover as Lucie, claimed Jack gave different excuses to everyone. To a harlot he’d ordered the first day of his arrival, he was here to visit relatives. To a musician on the stone footpath, he was an ambassador of peace, summoned by the Gods themselves. To Lucie, he was a soldier sent to guard the princess herself, and stopped by to ensure peace of the surrounding cities. Lucie asked them if he’d stopped by, an enigmatic man with blue fire for eyes, and the partygoers only glanced at Deanna, trusting her call more than their own ability to read the odd breaks of pattern. Deanna quickly vetoed her question; this stranger cared not of the citizens of Rynmille, only for himself and his own greedy pleasures. Lucie was relieved, a left the Anchor to express her joy to the musician and the harlot. Deanna wasn’t entirely sure why she protected this parvenu, why she was all ready lying to her own people for him, but her instincts led her to the conclusion of her make-believe existence in a virtual reality, and so she trusted her instincts above all else. Her instincts told her to lie to this naïve village girl, to distantly trust this foreigner Jack, and so she complied wordlessly. The very next day, Jack returned to the Anchor, beelining for Deanna, a mixture of a smirk and a smile splayed across his face. He thanked her, kindly, for “covering for him,” which confused Deanna further than she all ready was. She dismissed his thanks, asking only for a real explanation for what he was doing here. He took a deep breath, glanced around like someone was following him, before describing his situation fully to her. He claimed he admired a city so chock-full of mysteries and legends, so willing to tell the tales no others even remotely knew of. He was a storyteller, a journeyer, who the King chose to discover decipher The Myth of the Alchemist, an ancient text written in a language no modern cryptographer could understand. Vague letters in Standard allowed audiences to decode the title, along with a brief summary: An alchemist with the ability to control an artificial reality, to mimic voices and control elements and bend blood at will. The alchemist was considered a gift from the Gods, with the harbinger being the only individual who knew the ritual to gain these world-breaking powers, and he’d described this ceremony in vivid detail. Only, of course, no one could understand it. This CrackerJack fellow was the key, according to the King’s impeccable judgment, and the princess’s interference (Jack commented slyly over how Magdalene—on informal terms with the princess, Deanna noticed—held a soft spot for him. Deanna was not astonished in the slightest). King Nire hired him, asked him to indulge the natural curiosity Jack held close to his heart, to dig up the buried secrets of citizens and nobles alike, to do everything and anything to decrypt The Myth of the Alchemist. Jack admitted to forming little stories of his own to tell the residents of each town, testing his creative abilities and seeing how absurd he could make his anecdotes without the inhabitants questioning his honesty. He also leant forward, his forearms peeking through his cloak, and confided in her. “The girl wasn’t very subtle in her coquetting,” he whispered, smirking, referring to Lucie. Deanna remembered how upset she’d been when she figured Jack lied to her, and how pleased she’d been when she discovered he hadn’t been to the Anchor. Deanna pitied her, silently praying she’d stay to men more her paygrade—a raconteur-turned-mage was not very impressed by a naïve village girl, Deanna imagined. She told him, in the same quiet gossiper’s voice, of the artist’s son who was determined to marry the mixologist, for utterly no reason, especially with the six-year-old’s seven girlfriends scattered across the hamlet. Jack laughed, loudly, which caught the ears of his throng of admirers, hopeful eyes glaring at Deanna with a savagery only a handsome man could bring to desperate strangers. Jack noticed the expressions, and rolled his glowing irises, apologizing for the shameless jealousy. He stood from his chair and, with a wink toward the tavern keeper, strode out of the pub with the confidence of only the King’s chosen knight. Immediately, like a child throwing remainders of bread to a colony of gulls, women and men of all ages began flocking toward the bar, asking for Siren’s Song’s and Viper Bite’s under the pretense of interrogating her over Mister Clandestine Jack. Deanna refilled their glasses and deflected, an expert tactic she’d perfected over the years. After more mind-numbing Elysium Bliss’s, her patrons were eventually so intoxicated, one particularly handsy brunette slurred to her companion over her sexually frustration and then blacked out in the arms of a privateer with a beer belly and burly beard. Deanna handed over her shift to her nightly counterpart, a Lylee man by the name of Russel, dodging drunken opera singers and aroused alleyway people. Russel took one glance around the Anchor, at the deviance, at the arch of emotions their customers were experiencing as they drank their Fire Lily’s, and cursed Deanna to a new side of Hell, created specifically for her sadistic smirk and smug personality. She disappeared into her cottage and fell asleep, dreaming of gleaming magician’s eyes and a perfect, sublime imbalance. As it happens, ever since this outsider arrived in town, Rynmille’s love of quiet, calm situations had dissipated into a puff of cigar smoke and blue magic. Deanna was serving drinks at the Anchor like usual, when Miss Lucie strolled in, eyes as dark as coal and as cold as them too. Lucie marched up to the counter, slammed a bill on the mahogany, and demanded for a Devil’s Kiss. Deanna followed her order obediently, eying her carefully, like a hunter to potential prey. Lucie took a seat at the bar, twisting her long, spindly braids and beginning an entertaining, teenage rant that caused begrudging frowns to quirk up in defiance. She swallowed her Kiss like water, downing it harshly like her lionhearted mother, haranguing over her father’s insistence over keeping her as virginal and “innocent” as possible. Lucie was simply chatting with the musician’s apprentice, a young man with fluffy hair and faux-leather boots, when her father threatened to have him hanged for sedition and harassment, even though he hadn’t done anything. Lucie defended her friend, holding back her father as the boy bolted for the barn in the distance. The next hour, as she sulked in the shadows of her apple tree, she spotted Mister Jack walked along the path, notebook in hand. With her crush on the man (Lucie left this out of the story, seemingly hiding this fact from the rest of the world under lock and key), she brightened up instantly, striding over with more self-assurance than she had, and spoke to him over her problem. Jack thought it over for a moment, considered her options, but her father seemed to sense whenever Lucie was around semi-attractive men. He jumped out of the house and started shaking a knife at Jack, screaming obscenities at the top of his lungs. Jack was startled, but coolly responded to the threats like a true man of the King. Jack raised a single manicured brow, calmly telling the man threats did not make him want to scurry with his tail between his legs, only confirmed his theory of the elder being an absolute lunatic. The mage wished Lucie luck, purposefully smiled to further spite the old man—though, from Lucie, it was a charming attempt at trying to gain the village girl’s love, even in the sight of adversity—and walked away with grace in his step. Lucie stared dreamily after him, and her father dragged her away. She started an argument, calling him out on keeping her from men like a caged dog, when she couldn’t even speak to one without fearing for his safety. Directly after this fight, she stormed out, journeying into the Anchor for a place to vent and a decent audience. Deanna snorted at the comment, gesturing to the cougars who were daintily listening, waiting with sharp claws to sink into the young girl. The bartender abandoned her to the wolves and kept working; the Anchor was busier than usual. Deanna was serving Twin Glass’s to a group of women on a hen night, hollering over her beautiful husband-to-be, when a mysterious figure stepped into the pub. The gender-neutral wisp of dark robes floated toward Deanna, where she rested her hand casually on the shotgun she kept under the counter, next to her repair tools and handkerchiefs. The shadow tilted its hood curiously, leaning closer toward the barkeep. She studied them suspiciously, listening to the sounds of sobbing and adultery, observing the flow of their cloak and the clicking of their footsteps. Dark, Tall, and Emotionless carefully reached into their pocket, and withdrew a small, shining object. It gleamed like magic, pretty and honey-colored, and they held it with a kind of gentleness unheard of for a being so conspicuous. Deanna watched them under her own hawk-like gaze, wondering several things and none of them very polite. The silhouette placed the item on the counter, their hands pale and sickly, their eyes radiating light like a candlestick. Without a word, the being stood from their hunched-over position, took a single, dismissive glance over the Anchor’s dancefloor and sozzled clients, and walked out of the bar without a care in the world. The mixologist called after them, yelling demands like, “Hey! Cloak Person! Reaper That Arose to Take All Our Souls! You left something here!” but it was useless. They disappeared into the afternoon rush, citizens of all ages arriving from classes and lunchtime all at once. Deanna examined the thing abandoned on the counter, which shimmered and shifted like an iridescent rainbow. As if summoned by the sounds of conflict and the tavern keeper’s insults, Monsieur Jack emerged at the doorway. She waved him over, displaying the small item like a tourist attraction. He instantly began bombarding her with questions, queries corresponding to: “Did you know them? Have they ever appeared before? Did they say what they wanted?” She answered the negative to all of them, and Jack cursed without inhibitions. Lucie noticed his entrance, as she always did, and was currently mooning over him with the quidnuncs she’d befriended. Jack asked when Deanna’s stint was over, to which she replied, “Never,” with an ominous “dun, dun, dun,” provided by Russel’s favorite tipper, Vinny. At the expression on the mage’s countenance, she smiled, genuinely responding with a: “Midnight.” Jack nodded, pondering, before, like a gentleman, politely requested for Deanna to meet him after her shift, with ulterior motive whatsoever. With one wary eyebrow, Deanna agreed, and Jack vanished into the misty air outside of the Anchor. When midnight arrived, Deanna passed the mantle to Russel, who ignored her in favor of batting his eyelashes at Vinny. She smirked obnoxiously, catching the glint in Vinny’s eye and the hunger in Russel’s stance. She wished them both luck with their shameless adventures and strode out into the night, checking the area for a mysterious character with a mage’s cloak. Sure enough, Jack stood leaning against the alleyway, his magic shimmering off him in visible, physical waves. He quickly took her hand and began gently shepherding her away, further and further from the candlelight and anarchy of the Anchor. When she obligingly gave over the object the shadow left on the counter when he, hesitantly yet politely, asked for it, he told her of its magical origin, of its initial purpose as part of a bloody mutation ritual, of the message sent by its herald. He told her of the underground temple he’d discovered, buried in the rocks of Nil Cavern, with doors the size of a giant’s mouth and beautifully crafted gates made by the hands of gods. With the key, he gestured to the shadow’s leftovers—which, with a magical apparatus (Jack) to keep it from dissolving into pure light, began to look like a glass cylinder, ready to withhold a miniature pirate ship, with no narrow nose at the end—he could potentially locate the secret to deciphering The Myth of the Alchemist. All the breadcrumbs had led him here, the heart of all mystery, Rynmille: the home of the Alchemist’s legacy, and the melting pot of storytelling. When Deanna questioned why in the living Hel he’d decided to drag her on his adventure to discovery, he simply answered: “In this day and age, there are only two types of people: Ones that trust strangers, and ones that trust liars.” The bartender didn’t understand, not completely, what he was attempting to say to her, so she only stated, calmly and matter-of-factly, “Tell me what you’re going to tell me, without a trail of riddles to solve along the way, or forever hold your peace.” He threw his head back and laughed, loudly and pleasantly, glowing eyes twinkling with a whole lot of amusement and a whole nothing of regret, and gestured to keep moving, no explanation as to why or what he’d just said. A few leagues later, they were journeying down the gravelly non-linear path to Jack’s forgotten temple, with the mage stopping every couple cliffs to check the landmarks on the walls. When the cavern was excavated, workers scratched arrows on the limestone to ensure their own safety without losing their way. Jack casually leaped onto the sharp-edged cliffs and barely-there ledges without fear or reluctance, compared to Deanna’s wariness and habit of pausing occasionally. She wasn’t entirely sure where this bodily strength she’d summoned had come from, especially with her main assets being her ability to juggle alcohol bottles without spilling any goblets, but she didn’t curse this sudden talent of hers. If anything, it helped her keep up with Jack’s impatience and excitement, and allowed her not to fall from a hundred-meter drop. They arrived at the gates without much struggle, and Jack thrust his arms out wide like showing off a prized medallion collection. He grinned toothily, and a very small, man-obsessed portion of Deanna’s brain commented how attractive he appeared when he wasn’t scowling like a neutral-faced assassin or smirking like a brothel-keeper. Deanna shook her head to snap herself out of those thoughts, and admired the scenery in front of her. The gates were half-buried in the cavern, the barest hint of a keyhole—if a massive, cylinder-shaped opening was considered a keyhole—poking out from behind a stalagmite. Pillars framed the hidden area, shading the doorway from view of outsiders and a threat of a long, deadly fall fending away any and all adventurers attempting to find the next big thing. Jack popped in the key without preamble, and the gateway lit up with magic, lights so bright Deanna adverted her eyes beginning to shine from the doors, the sigil of an alter with a sun hanging over it clinging to her eyelids and the darkened walls surrounding them. The doors shuddered open, the power of ancient technology consuming the cavern until the ground was shaking and the stalactites above them began crashing into the limestone with sickening booms. Jack grabbed Deanna’s arm and jumped into the entrance of the temple, bringing her with him, with the gates slowly but surely crumbling behind them. Inside, the walls were covered in glyphs; from the top all the way to the floor at her feet, pictographs and letters were plastered like a multilinguistic poem. Jack gasped, staring at the room with wide, child-like eyes, the magic at his fingertips seemingly powerless compared to the goal of his journey finally being completed. Jack started muttering, reading aloud things like, “the meal of the common folk—bread! Would it matter what kind? Would we need to find the poorest person ‘round and have them willingly sacrifice to the gods?” and “the blood of royalty? Bloody Hel! Well, actually . . .” Deanna could only read the bits at the very bottom, which were detailed in her native tongue and Standard. She was beginning to become engrossed in why the Alchemist needed the heart of his former wife—a heart of coal, filled with such hatred it made itself heavy with discontent, was his description, to which he later confirmed to be the woman he once loved—when the world collapsed around them. Just as Jack assured: “It’s just the cave,” the ceiling caved in on itself, knocking the barkeep and the mage in different directions. Voices floated in from overhead: “He found it! He found it!” “No need to sound so amazed, Fiona. He brought a woman with him—he won’t settle for you.” Men dropped down in armored suits with weapons in the arms, helmets the shape of hogs and teeth the color of sand. Deanna instinctively chose a weapon of her own, a large piece of rock that would serve as a great chucking device, when Jack shouted, “Don’t hurt her! She was innocent in this! Let her go!” The shadow from the Anchor dropped into the room, a chuckle rumbling from their throat and causing more of ancient, treasured instructions to break. The mist in a cloak strolled casually to her, and she raised her rock protectively against herself. With a smile she could not see, they gestured at one of their henchmen for something. Jack was fighting on the other side of the Alchemist’s workshop, thrashing against the hold of his captors and knocking them all out one by one. One armored man cracked his head against the alter in the center, one took a magic flame to the face, one tried talking him out of arguing when they received a swift kick in the nostril. The shadow knelt, Deanna scrambling backward until her back hit the wall, and the henchman stepped forward. A gleaming axe was given to the dark figure and they traced the bladed edge with the adoration of a lover in their gaze. When they spoke, it was calm, almost soothing, and fully hypnotizing. They said, “I thought you knew this was no business for outsiders. I thought you knew better than to betray your own kind, to leave tracks in the snow for hunters to find. I thought you knew better than to care for another human being, after everything that’s happened and everything I’ve done for you.” Magic flared angrily in their eyes. Deanna watched Jack get pummeled by his own brethren, by his once flesh-and-blood, and his gaze snapped up to meet hers. His eyes spoke of true desperation, of sorrow and fear, of regret and lost hope. Deanna saw his lips move—“I’m sorry”—but she never heard his voice. Instead, she heard the shadow’s own quiet, dangerous speech, “I’m sorry,” and the axe was swung at her head. She blocked the attempt with her rock, and did so for several other endeavors, but she was eventually overrun and overwhelmed, the silver of the blade final and inevitable and peaceful. The last thing she knew was Jack’s cry of despair, and she slipped into sweet, silent darkness.

The Outsider, by alizaarches

I’m so, so sorry for my disappearance in the last two weeks. I’ll eventually make it up to you guys, with two bonus stories or something, but I really have no excuse for my non-writingness. Really, I blame writer’s block, as does every writer when the creative outlet in their mind went caput. Really. Ever since I’d written “Zombie Assassin” as me and my friends call it, you guys know the one, I ran out of writing ideas. See, I have a little note on my phone which has a list of prompts and such for short stories to post. Well, I exhausted that list, and suddenly had absolutely nothing in my brain to provide new ideas. So I kinda blanked. It was horrible. This sucks considering it’s summer and all, and I actually have time to write, but that’s my explanation. Writer’s Block is a bitch, no lie. Ugh.

Anyway, this story came out of nowhere. For this one, as usual, I had multiple inspirations. I would’ve welcomed these inspirations sooner, but you know how life goes. My list includes:

~Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (I was inspired by Karen Gillan with her whole “why am I wearing this in a freaking JUNGLE” thing; I originally wrote Deanna with a metal brassiere and the entire “stereotypical female videogame character” spiel, but changed the beginning for something better.)

~Videogames, obvious; mainly Tomb Raider (“underground temple”/searching for ancient stuff/being an ancient archaeologist) and Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (yeah, a lot of Skyrim; the entire town backdrop/bar scene/people are all inspired by Skyrim)

~Dean Winchester (the name, Deanna, and part of the personality)

I think that’s all of them. I think you can see the inspirations in my writing ;).

[alizaarches]

A drip of a drain, The heavy breathing of a sleeper, Rustling of juniper-colored sheets, The Dream Guardian watches. Through a gallery of darkness, Fluttering eyelashes, Terrible, perfectly reflected nightmares, Those that slumber anxiously await, The Dream Guardian watches. Wishes upon a star, Ringing voices begging toward the sky, Sparkling tears flowing down flushed faces, The Dream Guardian watches. For every naïve child, Every desperate teenager, Or ambitious adult, The Dream Guardian is assigned. Protection, Bravery, Hope, The Dream Guardian’s fate is left on the line. Deception, Thankless, Fear, For a human without purpose, Without life, Without love, As the Dream Guardian watches.

WMP, Also Known As: Weird Metaphorical Poetry, by alizaarches

Hello! This kinda came out of nowhere, but I’m working on another project, and it wouldn’t be ready in time, so I figured I’d switch gears. This is a weird ass idea, and it’s the shortest thing I’ve written in a while, but I think I deserve a break from story-full and long from Talon’s story. This one doesn’t a very entertaining story to it, sorry :c. Hope you enjoyed!

I’m also really, really sorry this is days late. I completely forgot to upload this, even though I had it written in time. I’m also too lazy to do tags at the moment. Oops.

[alizaarches]

(Journal found thousands of years into the future, with gold calligraphy written on the cover: Talon) ENTRY I Jean Taylor is a boy around my age, who hates life even more than me. His rich parents from deep within the quarantined area in 49th decided to send their last remaining heir to the Training System in the metal cage we call school. With gates surrounding us like we were meant to be kept in, rather than monsters meant to be kept out, Jean and lots of other kids are not here voluntarily. We’re here to learn to protect the next generation of people from zombies. We’re here to wield a katana, to shoot a machine gun (or a pistol, if you’re slinky Evelyn Fry), to inspect our fellow humans to ensure they aren’t the very beast we’re trying to kill. The lucky ones, brats like the le Rey twins and Criss Crow, got into the actually educational part of this damn world—the science wing. Us schoolkids nicknamed the research department “the Gray” because of the lack of color in the interior and exterior buildings, and the lame uniforms provided to the students attending. For my department, the soldier-training area, we called it “the Red” for the blood we spill, even at such a young age. (Also, we’re not very subtle in our supposedly camouflaged outfits: ruby bulletproof vests and the loudest, stompiest boots in the history of fashion.) In the Red, the soldiers selected are usually the guinea pigs for the Gray’s experiments in finding the Cure—the panacea, the messiah in a world of apocalyptic stature. (We’re only here to make sure the injection isn’t lethal, because only an infected could prove the Cure to truly work.) We’ve gotten closer than ever—or so the Gray claims—so the General assures us that we might not even need to use the skills we’re being taught. “Just in case,” she’d tell us solemnly. She knows more than she wants to tell us, and I can’t really blame her. I’m the best she’s got, and even then, I can only shoot the target twenty percent of the time. Back to Jean. He’s impertinent, and refuses to listen to our battle instructor, Geneva, whatsoever. He acts like he owns the place, like this Administration had a privilege in having him around at all, rather than gratitude for not dying to a sickness that literally eats you alive. He’s been put in the corner—the punishment that never works—more times than anyone I’ve ever known, and he’s been trying to get more allies with the other kids in the Red. He wants a revolution against an organization that is teaching us how to survive. He thinks we’re being held in a birdcage and brainwashed into believing whatever crap the government chooses to feed us. He thinks we’re being turned against our fellow humans, despite how bloodthirsty or flesh-eating the zombies the veterans have killed. He thinks we should have the decision to fight, but I think he’s just afraid. Rather than straightening his back and using the fire in his eyes for something more than pettiness, like the leading male soldier (as the leading female is me) called Primus, he sits around and pouts until he’ll get what he wants. I pity him. The General decided used him as an example, in the cruel and immortal way that’s becoming a sad social normality. Calling one of our smaller classes—Geneva was teaching us basic First Aid; after we finished our work, we’d get to play in the yard outside—the General summoned us to the entry gates. Military tanks and well-guarded warriors shielded the entrance, escorting the General as she strolled out, with her hand tightly holding onto Jean. Jean’s small, stubborn face was terrified, and rightly so. We watched, horrified and slightly more afraid of the General’s wrath, as she let go of his hand and bolted back into the gates, ordering the legionnaires to shut them completely. He followed, running as fast as his little legs could take him, tears streaming down his face, begging the General to let him back inside, promising to never act in defiance ever again. She, coolly and nastily, told him that, from his insolence, he could take care of himself, and he didn’t need the help of the Administration’s birdcage after all. Traumatized, Jean’s knees buckled, dry heaving and beginning the symptoms of a panic attack. Calmly, the General dismissed all of us and shepherded Jean to the nurse. Geneva told us, later, wincing, this was the General’s way of “teaching us a lesson,” and simultaneously using the opportunity to discipline Jean for all his shenanigans. Those were the events of yesterday. It’s the morning, now. I can tell my fellow Reds are still pondering over the fate of the blue-eyed boy. Everyone’s tense and nervous, especially after Geneva did an announcement over the loudspeakers: All trainees are to begin proper training at eight o’clock sharp. Lateness would not be tolerated. Translating into: If you’re late, you will be punished, possibly as harshly as poor Jean Taylor. You know, minus the whole “probable death” hanging over all our heads, I’m pretty damn excited. We’ve only been doing basics—sparring hand-to-hand and Evelyn’s beloved pistol shooting—to weed out the weakest links and determine the strongest ones. With proper training, we’ll be able to exercise with the actual foot soldiers, veterans who’ve fought on the battlefield and stared zombies in the eye as they’ve pulled the trigger. We’ll get to meet legends. We’ll get the chance to be legends. We’ll get to become what we were meant to be. ENTRY V The General’s watching me. As most of us are beginning to finally get the grasp on fighting, I’m being watched even more closely than before. Geneva has been teaching us sparring, and pistol-shooting, for a long time, but now we’re being trained properly. For the past few weeks, we’ve been hanging by the skin of our teeth. From the painful paintball tournament—with bullets full of vaccinations that mimic the pain of gunshot wound—that, to no one’s surprise, Primus and I won (it was the last girl and last boy standing, or perhaps whatever genderless being that was left alongside us), to the desperate emergency physician simulators that, to everyone’s surprise, Criss Crow, Harmony Lias, and non-binary Elle Yi won. Yi, Crow, and Lias successfully saved their patients—that were “under the influence”; also known as a comatose state that would awake an hour after failed attempts at an antidote—by somehow constructing an antitoxin from the ingredients and tools provided. I wasn’t extremely upset from losing, because I’m not part of the Gray, I haven’t the first clue about creating scientific serums and all that. I’m aware of the most essential of First Aid, and that’s all I need, I think. Anyway, the General has been observing me. Me and Primus have been an unstoppable machine when it came to battling, with Crow, Lias, and Yi being masters at the Gray’s tests of science. Every time I had to the gym, to train with the class or even on my own, I can feel the General judging me—every time I stumble with my kicking, I can almost hear her scolding about the importance of posture; every time I miss with my arrows, I can almost hear her assessments on how efficiently I draw back my bow, or how I angle my projectile. She’s harsher with me, and the other winners of her curious, messed-up trials, than she is with anyone else. She wants to turn us into her obedient little soldiers, to perfect us into the saviors of humanity. She’s lost hope for the others, ones like Jean Taylor and Evelyn Fry, ones that rebel and are shoved into pathetic submission. She thinks they’re useless objects compared to us. We’re one step closer to the Cure every time I defeat Fry at sparring, every time Primus grits his teeth against the recoil of a gun, every time Crow concocts a new experiment to try. She’s watching the Best, with a capital ‘B’, with hawk-like eyes. She’s going to make us become her liberators, her protectors. Her assassins. ENTRY VII “A wonderful idea, Talon!” the General said to me, smirking like a cat that got the cream: extremely irritatingly and smugly. Primus, my only fellow Red that is as great as me, laughed under his breath; we’ve decided to establish a friendship rather than a rivalry. I glared at him, hissing curses that Geneva taught us and only amusing him further. The General discovered this journal of mine, a recommendation by Geneva’s intelligent, prettyboy son (good-looking people shouldn’t have the right to be smart as well), and decided it was something to announce to the entirety of my class. Julius, Geneva’s child, saw my silence, and thought it was best to give me an outlet to “express myself.” He claimed it was because “a creative mind should never be silent” and all that. He claimed he admired my ever-changing, vibrant mind, and it was a goddamn shame that I hadn’t put it to use. He, like his mother, had a habit of budding into other people’s business like clockwork. Both of them had the same smile, the same craving to solve the puzzle that was Talon. In an attempt to appease me, Julius stole from the barrack’s report system of pen-and-paper, and took this very book from the Administration and gave it to me. His only condition was to, at some point in the near future, let him read an entry. I could pick which one, to ensure minimum embarrassment, but he only wanted to take the wild freight train that is my mind for a spin. His only stipulation. I never started writing in this book until after I heard what had happened. Julius went out on a service mission with his team, when they were ambushed by zombies—a brilliant, strategic move made by the men who’s created the virus in the first place: Malaise. The General forced Geneva to report the disaster to us—the Red and the Gray, this time—and our strong, independent battle instructor could barely get through the sentence without a tear running down her cheek. She choked back as much of her emotions as possible, for our sakes, but we all knew what she was thinking. Julius was eaten alive, held captive, or one of the undead. No one spoke disrespectfully toward Geneva for weeks afterward, not even Jean. We gave her time to grieve. Out of guilt, and sadness, I started this journal. First, I signed my name. Elegantly, as I always am, in cursive handwriting: Talon. I didn’t pick it up, not really, until I felt like I had something to write about. In my head, I always have an extensive, descriptive mental monologue. I ranted, and I begrudgingly admitted damn prettyboy Julius was right. I could finally express my emotions without expressing my emotions, you know? Back to what’s happening lately. Back to the hurtful reality. Well, the General found out. Geneva all ready knew, I’m pretty sure, with Julius being her son and all. Nonetheless, the General decided that announcing to my entire class that I have a “diary” was necessary. I swear that woman thrives on misery. My fellow Reds in training, including the double-crossing Primus and the weak Evelyn Fry, smirked at me throughout all of today’s events. At the dartboard, a quiet and anxious girl called Lea Snow, asked me if I’d written about a crush in my journal and that was why I was so defensive over it. I’d thought the time of stereotypes was over, but I guess not. A girl cannot own a place to store her own thoughts without discussing romanticisms. If I could sigh through a book, I would be, at the moment. Evelyn Fry’s protective but softhearted older brother, Jack, asked me to spar with him. (After me and Primus, Jack was the next-in-line for the best soldier the General had created. It was a wonder how he was related to his dagger-wielding, fearful Evelyn.) He told me, during the short time I spent pinned under him, that he believed I would be a worthy adversary, if the time would come that we would battle for the same side no longer. Before I could say, or even think, of a response, my body worked quicker than my mind. I switched our positions, kept his throat under my wrist, and he surrendered. The General whisked me away without another opportunity occurred to speak with him, and the last thing I saw was Evelyn Fry glaring at me. I don’t know why Jack Fry felt the need to tell me this. How could the inference of me brandishing a journal for my deepest, most private internal rambling cause him to consider me a worthy enemy? Had I done something to him? To Evelyn (besides beat her pride into the ground—everyone did that)? Did he notice the General’s interest in me and my fellow Soldiers? I don’t know, and that frustrates me. Not only did I get brutally humiliated in the face of my Headmaster, but I was also treated by Lea as a human with sentiments, and by Jack as a future foe. Just as I begin to climb even more in the ranks, gaining speed above even some veterans, the General leaves me with little to no respect to intimidate my own warriors. Primus was no help—he left me to my agony alone, like only a true friend every would. He patted my shoulder, gave me a sarcastic salute, and left to flirt with the le Rey twins—he’s older than me, so Geneva didn’t immediately tell him off for it. It’s not difficult to be older than me. I’m one of the youngest in the whole System, the Hell we call school, with only Harmony Lias and a few others to beat me at being the absolute last person at the end of the age line. One of the various reasons why I’d caught the General, Geneva, and Julius’s eyes—so young and yet so capable, so powerful. The General needs me to complete her plan, whatever it is. She needs me and the Best, and only the Best can fulfill their destinies. Or so she claims. She hasn’t told me. She’s told Primus and Elle and Harmony and Criss; all of the Best, except me. I’m not even vaguely surprised anymore. ENTRY XXIX Today is my fourteenth birthday. It’s been years since I’ve started this journal, since I’ve joined the Training System (also known as: the General’s School for Creating Perfect Assassins). Everyone older—Primus, Criss, Jack, Elle, and more, but those are the ones I cared about—faced this kind of… epiphany at age fourteen. You are forced to choose which path you will take for the rest of your life: Geneva says it’s similar to choosing your major in college, or picking which class to be in an RPG (whatever that is). In the System, the General has mini jobs for every individual student. For people like Jean Taylor and Evelyn Fry, those jobs are in the Communications—“They’re the people in secret agent films that tell Bond his mission and guide him along the way,” explained Geneva to us; we have very little free time here, but Geneva once treated us to a Bond marathon on a TV running on some of the last working generators in existence. “They get the safe, boring jobs,” Primus said to me, which made a lot more sense. For people like Elle Yi, Criss Crow, and eventually Harmony Lias, those jobs are the Cure: everything is about the cure. Discovering what caused the virus, how it spread so quickly, how it effected the brain so severely, triggering the inhumane instincts our bodies have learned to ignore to jumpstart, and how to counterattack it. So many have died, so many have become living, breathing monsters that have the same self-control as a rabid animal. Their jobs are meant to save the human race from extinction, and now, with the unveiling of how Malaise created the damn virus, we finally have a chance at creating a panacea to kill the damn thing once and for all. As for me, and for Primus, our jobs are in the field. We’re not body-shields, unlike the majority of our class. We’re not bait, unlike quite a few kids who think they’re invincible and immune to the virus. We’re hidden, members of the shadows, one of the very select couple that are sent to destroy Malaise. Rather than fighting back against their virus, mine and my fellow Slayers are combatting the humans behind the virus: the evil Dr. Ferrore, his mastermind husband Commander Joli—ironically, Joli is the General’s former partner-in-crime, so the drama there is undeniable—and their puppet, Delia Gull. With those three as the triumvirate in charge, they’ve ruled the Earth for decades with well-placed bombs containing Z10, their deadly masterpiece. Once a trainee turns fourteen, they are informed of all of this. They are asked to decide which roadway to take, which career they are comfortable in taking. For me, it was never really an “if,” it was always more of a “when.” The General chose this life for me a long, long time ago. Today, I turn fourteen. Today, I become a Slayer and join Primus and, unsurprisingly, Jack Fry on the field as true soldiers. Well, actually, not exactly. I’m not the age of consent yet, in this damn school, and the age of consent is the age where I can “officially” start killing people. Unofficially, I can only go on missions with other people, with someone else in charge. Once I turn seventeen, I can assassinate all on my own, with no one but myself to stop me. Strangely, I’m excited for it. ENTRY XXX The Best threw me a little birthday party yesterday. After my explanation of the working social ladder of the System, I went to prepare for my first mission with Primus and Jack. Evelyn Fry, Jack’s younger sister, pulled me aside and hissed that if her brother were to die or turn under my watch, I would never go on another assignment for all time. In an attempt to be cordial, I just nodded and ducked out of there as quickly as possible. I wasn’t nearly as terrified of Evelyn as she was of me, but I chose to forgive her. Her brother was going on an assassination job, and there was a very real possibility she would lose the last remaining member of her family. (Jack told me that he and “Evie” were all each other has. Their mother was one of the first Slayers during the initial outbreak, and was thrown into the ocean, handcuffed with a ball and chain attached to her leg. She was drowned by Malaise after being caught on a mission. In his grief, the last thing their father ever did for them was send them here, the Training System. He disappeared shortly afterward, to never be seen by either of his children ever again.) After I left Evelyn, I was debriefed by the General and Geneva. Firstly, the General winked at me and revealed a piece of information only newly fourteen-year-olds and beyond knew: her name. She told me to call her General Montgomery, and if I was feeling brave, to call her Carla. My entire life I’ve known her as “the General,” so now that I can put a name to the face, I feel unbalanced, like everything suddenly shifted sideways and I haven’t steadied my center of gravity yet. The General told me—because the boys had known everything all ready, and I was just joining the party—the mission. Our assignment was minor, more to teach me the basics rather than make a dent in the world. An Administration spy spotted the daughter of a Malaise Senator, called Lyssa, planting a bomb of Z10, nearby. The job was to kill Lyssa, and defuse the bomb without infecting ourselves. Without much of a hitch, we were dressed in bulletproof uniforms in our precious, unsubtle blood-red and sent out. I was the distraction. I, in proper Talon fashion, walked directly at Lyssa’s campsite. It was a small thing, an orange tent with a blue campfire and a shotgun laying at the dark-haired woman’s side. Her ears were untrained, as she was a deep sleeper and did not awaken at the sound of my footsteps. I rolled my eyes and smoothly unsheathed out my pistol. I yanked off the safety and pointed at her head, gesturing to Jack and Primus. Jack gracefully dodged the tripwires and began to defuse the explosive with his pack of tools. Lyssa, still asleep, cuddled her Winchester like a teddy bear. Primus sighed through his nose and shook his head, muttering to me about infamous idiocy. I laughed, purposefully loud, to wake Lyssa up before he could kill her. The more information we find out about Malaise, the better. It’s rare we get this kind of opportunity. Lyssa jolted, her hazel eyes finally fluttering open, and froze. She stared carefully at the gun in my hand, slowly unwrapping her arms from around the shotgun, like if she did it discreetly enough, we wouldn’t notice. I pointed my pistol at her arm, raising an eyebrow, challenging. She glared, but stilled in her movements. I helped Primus interrogate her, asking her why she did it (after a few threats and tosses of a syringe carrying the Z10 virus, she was quite easy to crack; her response was “my father wanted me to”), how involved she and her father are in Malaise and the original zombie outbreak (“My father is more involved than I am. He’s the Senator, I’m just his heir. He doesn’t tell me anything. If he did, the Council would have his head on a stick for jeopardizing the operation. He was a mole in the UN for the first strike team that created Malaise. I wasn’t even more then! He didn’t have anything to do with the making of Z10, more for the distribution of it. As a Senator, he could travel all around the world unsuspected, and Malaise used that to their advantage. They took over the world.”), and why she was here in the first place—she was a random Senator’s daughter!—She looked vaguely offended as she spoke: “I was asked to. Frankly, I think you all did the same as I did.” “Yeah,” Jack snorted from his position with his pliers, “except we were trained for what we do.” Primus told Lyssa the objective of our being out here, and she paled, beginning to bolt with her shotgun outstretched in front of her. With the majesty a ballerina could only wish to have, Primus shot his revolver, calmly, as if his target wasn’t moving and on the verge of panic and murder. The brunette’s head snapped back with a sickening crack! of a sound, and her body fell to the ground, lifeless. Like in the battle simulations we did back at the System, I quickly scurried over to her body and scoured her for anything she had on her person—potentially something useful, like battle plans or even a list of names, enemy or ally, would be extremely welcomed, at that moment. Casually, I snatched everything I could—a wallet full of Malaise currency (useful), an empty canteen (useful), her shotgun (useful), and a dead, unchargeable battery (useless). Jack contemplated out loud if the battery was connected to the little tin of Z10, but we dismissed the train of thought. There was nothing we could do, and so we did nothing. My first mission was a successful one. Thank whatever God may exist for that. The birdie in our ears, Primus’s girlfriend, gave us the directions to the rendezvous point where we’d be heading back to the birdcage we call home. We were told to use our Communications Consultant—everyone in the Red and the Gray call them birdies, because of the whole “a little birdie told me” saying; I sometimes call them my conscious for the fun of it—only when we needed them. The entire mission, we hadn’t needed them. Or, in this case, with a smaller mission, we hadn’t needed her. Trinity, our little birdie, asked us questions to start off our mission report paperwork—she was an angel, really, I have no idea how she has Primus as a boyfriend—as we walked back. I was quiet for most of the conversation, letting Primus and Jack do the talking. The less social interaction I have to expose myself to, the better. We were promptly picked up by whatever unlucky soul General Montgomery—that still felt weird—assigned. Primus said he was proud of me, with Jack’s silent but smiling agreement only making me feel happier, like I’d finally begun doing what I was always meant to do. Geneva met us at the gates, her familiar rambling comforting me as I was back in a place where nothing could hurt me, and nothing could get inside. Geneva led us to a conference room where we reported our findings for Trinity (to fill out the pen-and-paper for us) and the General to hear. As the General loved us—we were her favorites, and even her insistent denials couldn’t convince us otherwise—Primus leaned over and kissed Trinity, with the girl in question squeaking and reddening like a stop sign. The General scolded him, with a sly grin on her face, and demanded for all the information we knew. After the briefing, which was excruciatingly long and depressing, we all went our separate ways. I got dressed into our regular school uniform and was going to leave to ask Geneva when my next mission was going to be (just got back from one, and I all ready wanted more; I’m a bit of an adrenaline junkie), when a knock sounded on my door. Confused, I thought why anyone would knock on my door out of everyone’s, but I figured I’d just satisfy my curiosity and go check. I strode over and flung open the doorway. Standing before me, was Criss Crow, with his typical mischievous, “I’m your worst nightmare” smirk. He glanced me up and down before saying to himself, “It’ll do,” and dragging me out of my room. I protested, loudly, but he refused to budge. I didn’t think it was anything involving mutiny or fatality, from the winks and “Don’t worry, you’ll love it” he was throwing at me, so I just sighed in exasperation and accepted my fate. He pulled me into a side room down the recreation hallways, and ran into the darkness, leaving me behind. I yelled after him, about to follow, when the lights turned on, and I got the scare of my life. My only friends—translation: the only people who don’t think I’m unstable and going to kill them at any give time—were standing in the middle of an open area, covering a table slightly behind them. Primus, the bastard, was the oldest, and laughed at my sputtering like I was a puppy chasing its tail, an amusement for him to watch. He leant forward and, against my profanity and promises of murder, hugged me. He muttered sappy things to me, how he was proud of me and how he was glad he had someone of his own caliber on the field now and how he always saw me as a sister to him, blah, blah, blah. Clinging to him, I buried my face into his chest, acting like I wasn’t all ready on the verge of tears. He petted my hair and chuckled, passing me from one person to the next like a dance routine. The following person was Trinity—of course it was—and she hugged me too, whispering that I was all grown up and about to leave the nest and she couldn’t handle it. I shook my head at her, laughing wetly, a few drops of sweat beginning to stream down my face (Primus called it denial, I called it: the room was too hot for its own good). Next, thirteen-year-old Harmony jumped on me, exclaiming how jealous she was and how she couldn’t wait to join me at the top tier when she turns fourteen. She was a child, and by default, so was I. We were so different that I had a hard time believing we were closer in age than me and Primus. Next, I was passed to Elle Yi, who wordlessly wiped the drops of moisture on my ruby-red cheeks and smiled. I sobbed—without tears! just, kind of, dry heaving…—and tackled them in a hug. They stroked my hair, before gently giving me to the succeeding person down the line. Mister Criss Crow, the one who’d brought me here in the first place, wiggles his eyebrows and asked me if I was suddenly grateful for trusting him. I jokingly turned away, causing him to squawk, and then our friend group exploded into laughter. I then gave him a hug, thanking him quietly, and he nodded, his chin digging into my head, and said, “No problem, kiddo.” He and Primus had a habit of calling me kiddo, despite Harmony standing right next to me. I didn’t understand it, but when it came to boys, I never would. Lastly, I came across Jack Fry. Such a complicated relationship between me and him. We’ve become friends over the years, with being part of the Best preventing us from being strangers, but our past rivalry and my dislike of his sister causes some rifts between us from time to time. Still, he opened his arms to me, and I stepped into them with a smile. He thanked me for being civil with Evelyn, and I was reminded how much I love my friends. More sweat began rolling down my face, and I felt the warmth of more people beginning to surround me—a group hug, for me, on my birthday. I started breaking down, bawling like a baby. Trinity started cooing at me, and Primus started comforting me, and I determined that this was the best birthday I have ever had. My fourteenth birthday was not one I would ever forget. ENTRY LXII Carla Montgomery is trying to gain my trust and undying loyalty, as if she didn’t have it all ready. The General chose to finally told me about my parentage. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been in the Training System. I was raised by caretakers under orders by the higher-ups, molded even as a child to fight for the Administration without hesitation or doubt. We are treated as children, taught history and literature and arithmetic until age nine. Then, we are taught the basics of self-defense and zombie-killing, including dagger-wielding and pistol shooting. (I was always a bigger fan of guns than medieval sharp objects, personally.) As everyone knows, age fourteen is the beginning of joint missions, while age seventeen is the time you ultimately become an adult in the eyes of the Administration, and of the General. Well, as my seventeenth is rapidly approaching, Carla—as me and the Best have begun to call her, the same way we call Commander Zim, Geneva—pulled me aside. Primus, Jack, and I have become a force to be reckoned with, and we’ve been doing team drills rather than individual-based ones. When Carla took me by the arm and guided me away from the boys, they both gave me a look; Primus’s read: Good luck, and Jack’s read: (Internal laughter) It’s your time, young one. I’ve been spending too much time with them. The General dismissed them with a graceful flourish of her ponytail, and tugged me along. She eventually turned to face me, her eyebrows furrowed with concern, and started telling me the truth that I had been curious about my entire life. My family. According to her, my parents were notorious. Let’s call my mother Lorraine and my father Cyrus, because the General only called them “your mother” and “your father” and that can get quite competitive. Lorraine and Cyrus were members of the Administration from the beginning. They were part of the latest generation of teenagers when the virus exploded, and grew up to become a genius female scientist and an accomplished male Slayer. Years down the line, the remaining people of society began repopulation. My mother was expecting, and the two of them were elated, for the first time since the outbreak. Soon, this all changed, Carla reassured, like I was naïve enough to believe this story held a joyful ending. My father, Cyrus, was on an assassination assignment, when everything went as wrong as it possibly could’ve. He was caught by Malaise, and, rather than kill him mercifully, they dubbed him with a fate worse than death. Commander Joli ordered for victims of Z10 to be released into Cyrus’s imprisonment. Lorraine’s husband turned into a zombie while she was pregnant with me. Malaise, using the scientist’s weakness for Cyrus, sent the infected Slayer back to the Administration’s Professional Branch—a place humans would go if they chose to go somewhere beyond the practice ground that was the Training System. (You can, technically, stay in the Training System forever, like Carla and Geneva, but, if you’re like Jean Taylor, and you consider this metallic home as a inescapable cage, then you’d take any excuse to leave.) Lorraine and the General’s mother, the original General of the Administration, found poor Cyrus and put him out of his misery. Teary-eyed, Lorraine couldn’t even go near him, lest he become rabid and bite her, especially with her expecting with one member of the future of mankind. Cyrus was killed, and Lorraine kept moving. Even while she was pregnant, my mother was determined to continue her research about the virus. She discovered something, a powerful something, and Malaise knew it. Before she could delve deeper into her analysis, Malaise assigned a Slayer after her. She evaded both capture and death up until she gave birth to me, where she was the most vulnerable. Shortly after I was born, she was killed in a hospital bed. A piece of information that shocked me more than the murders of my parents—because, if they hadn’t passed, I’d know exactly who they were—was this: neither of my parents named me; it was, in fact, Carla Montgomery. She was a child at the time, the youngest heir of the original General. Olivia Montgomery, Carla’s mother, asked, like every mother would, what name to give this newly born daughter of a scientist and an assassin. I was almost called “Merlin,” from Carla’s favorite bird, but the little girl that would eventually become my mentor thought for a few moments, before saying, as firmly as a young human can be, “Talon.” And thus, I became Talon, and the General all ready had a huge impact on my life without my even knowing it. I was saddened at the thought of my mother’s grief, of knowing the one she loved most became a mindless monster by mindful monsters, and how helpless she would’ve felt with the responsibility of being the wielder of a future soldier. Lorraine, the actual nameless woman she was, was brave, in the ability to continue with her craving for information even while in grave danger. I would’ve loved to have known her. I would’ve loved to have known Cyrus, my also unnamed father. I would’ve loved to have my actual parents with me, but, of course, I don’t. I was nodding my head, frowning, still processing everything, when Carla spun around on her heel and strolled away. Primus and Jack instantly popped up next to me, materializing like proper Slayers in the night. Primus, regal as always, barely looked even slightly exhausted from training, with Jack’s eyes being wide and curious from her conversation with the General. Jack quickly questioned her, Primus’s back straightening with every unveiling statement I spoke. The top tier Slayer’s expression grew more and more concerned for my wellbeing, with the second tier growing more weary of Carla’s intentions. He’s never really trusted her; she only adores the Best, and only ever the Best, and nothing remotely less. He has this conspiracy theory that she’s been trying to manipulate the Best into mindless loyalty with motherly influence, almost like Stockholm syndrome. Treating us like her own children, she would gain our trust to use us as weapons against our enemies. I don’t believe in this theory, because that would absolutely break my heart—having one of the own parental figures in my life being kind to me for her own personal gain—but, then again, that could’ve been Jack’s entire point. Whenever me or Primus—the ones closest to Jack—ever speak with Carla, he acts like we were thrown into the mouth of a beast. I appreciate his concern, but it’s unnecessary; I think, at least. Primus asked if I needed Harmony, or Geneva—Harmony was the best Best member with emotions; she was the optimist with an air of comfort and kindness. Geneva was more of a mother to me than Carla, to the eternal relief of Jack, so I usually go to her when I need to talk to someone. I’m close with her, to the dismay of most of our class. Kids think I use that to my advantage, that I used that to climb up to Best status. Of course, everyone will use an excuse to claim I had all my achievements fed to me on a silver platter. No one likes whenever someone is better, or is treated better for being better. I only answered Primus with a shake of my head, asking quietly to finish practice early, to fully regain my grip on reality once more. The boys floated away, with empathetic gazes and flashing teeth, presumably to visit the women in their lives, Trinity and Evelyn. I wandered around the academy with an overwhelmed mind and a curious tilt of my head. Eventually, after too much thinking and wistfulness for a life I’d never have, I ducked my head and marched back into my room. The bedrooms here are less personal and more professional, more similar to a barracks and less like, well, a bedroom. The Best have their own living quarters, even ones as young as me and Harmony, for experimental reasons. If we’re alone, do we progress quicker or slower? If we’re alone, will we practice as frequently as we would with company? Unlike the rest of the soldiers, my room is as simplistic as it can get—white walls, a desk full of old schoolwork, and a diploma of finishing the first two Sequences, one at age nine and one at age fourteen, a permanent reminder of my attachment to the Administration. This journal usually lays on my bedside table, masked by a book cover of General Yvonne Loom’s Guide to Battle Strategy. If one of the maids became a little too nosy for their own good, they would expect no less for battle prodigy Talon to be reading old, boring war strategies right before she was going to sleep. They have no idea how wrong they are about me, and that will never change. It’s better to be a legend than a human being, after all. ENTRY LXVIII It’s been a few weeks since I turned seventeen, the age of consent in this birdcage we call a home and the age one needs to be to begin going on solo missions for the Administration. The very day of my birthday, the General sent me off on my first unaccompanied assignment to our rival organization, Malaise. My assassination was meant for a young man called Syl, a proud, extremely rich entrepreneur who’s family name lasted even after the bloody zombie apocalypse. He was a sponsor to Malaise, the only company that could somehow maintain his idiotic social status under these kinds of circumstances. Other females in my class, excluding Evelyn Fry, for once, but including Lea Snow, drooled over him when his photograph was shown in the debriefing. Every time before a person is chosen for a job, multiple different Slayers are shown the victim meant to be assassinated, and the assaulter is eventually picked, based on skill, experience, and the like. When Syl was shown, the heterosexual women present, and the homosexual men, the ones without any bit of dignity, began drooling over him, despite the fact we were meant to kill the handsome soul. Lea, while gaping at his picture, refused to take up the mission—the only thing that let me maintain respect for her. I didn’t stand for attraction for prey, especially when the Administration’s maxim was to never let anything, emotions particularly, interfere with the operation. Lea blushed furiously, quickly yet politely declined, and skidded out of there like she was being chased. A shameless girl named Shay fluttered her eyelashes, smiling, and volunteered happily. Carla chided her, deadpanned, telling her that she hadn’t ever volunteered before, and it was useless to assign her someone to essential to murder. Geneva recommended me, for my prowess and vast knowledge regarding tactics and weaponry. I succeeded with little struggle, catching the final glance of good-looking Syl before a death by a dagger in the throat. I’ve been busy recently. Since my first, I’ve gone on various missions to different parts of the Malaise empire. First, Mister Sponsor Man Syl, then Letter-Delivery-Boy, then Trophy Husband, then Trophy Wife, and more, in only a matter of days between them. I’ve become the nuisance for Malaise, and the Administration of using their newest apparatus with vigor. I’m their biggest surprise in decades. Primus, Jack, and I have been training harder than ever, and I know that Elle and Criss have been researching as passionately as my mother once did. With the absence of Harmony damaging their resources, they’ve refused to leave the lab, testing out concoctions once thought to be works of fiction. Primus has been pushing me to neoteric limits, challenging me at every turn and ensuring I never get too confident in my abilities. Geneva has taken the role has my mission advisor, recommending which assignments fit my strengths and weaknesses best, and how to do each job effectively. Trinity is still my birdie, with the boys stepping in at very rare times. I’ve gotten better, and, for an odd and semi-screwed reason, I feel like one of those preachers Primus hates, like I’m doing God’s work. I don’t know. It feels like I’m righting the balance of the world, like, with my successful attacks on Malaise, I’m doing what I was always meant to do, what I’m best at and what I believe is right. It’s not a feeling I’m used to. My next mission is the one that might change the course of history, more so than anything or anyone I’ve ever seen. My mission is to assassinate the weakest link of the Malaise triumvirate, Delia Gull. Delia Gull is a plump woman, as plump as anyone can be in an apocalyptic scenario, with dark hair and a malicious agenda. She takes the role of the peacekeeper of Malaise, convincing new associates to join them with a sweet, sickly smile and a voice no one can say ‘no’ to. Delia, while ambitious and equally screwed in the head as the rest of the lonely bunch, is not nearly as cunning or invested as Ferrore, the evil scientist, and his Commander husband, Joli. The doctor has been evolving the Z10 virus to counter any kind of progress we’ve made to find the Cure, while Commander Joli is the face of the operation, charismatic and kind to all, only ever desiring and siding the best for humanity. Joli is in charge of the defenses of their multiple bases, the strategies that keep them all afloat even when the ship is flooding around them. Compared to the deadly spouse duet, Gull is our biggest hope in making a dent in the Malaise aristocracy. With my recent successes, the General has entrusted me with the job, with no one at my disposal. I protested, for the first time since I was young and rebellious, declaring that, in order to secure such a huge assignment, I’d need at least a backup plan, with others of my caliber, rather than going in with the determination of a toddler with a match-the-shapes toy and the isolation of a neglected penguin. Carla was adamant of my solitary, citing the results of the Bedroom Experiment—I, apparently, worked best alone. I glanced at her with confusion in my eyes, and she began pulling rank, “You’ll do as I say and when I say it. You are a Slayer of the Administration, and you dare speak to me with no respect?” I hadn’t been chastised since I was a child, especially not by the Headmaster that loved me above all else. I flushed, ashamed, before eventually agreeing to go to this mission by myself, with no backup whatsoever. I don’t like this. The one thing Geneva drilled into my mind for seventeen bloody years was to trust my instincts. As a Slayer, without listening to your gut, you’re limited to only your skill and problem-solving, which could be problematic if you have neither. Mark my damn words, this is a terrible idea, and I hope no one gets punished for the General’s mistakes. I leave today. I’m hoping I’m wrong about this. I think the General is, too. LOG X I’ve taken Endor McClain. Joli and I have decided to do what’s best for the world: eliminate the Administration’s best assassin in the cruelest way possible. He attempted to kill Miss Gull, a newly appointed ally of ours, and so we shall show him the truth of Malaise. We are not weak, and we shall not stand for what he and his petty insurgents are promoting. He has been situated into the chambers, where he will meet my lovely creation. I call her Wendy. Wendy, as described in previous logs, is a youthful girl injected with Z10, the virus I have been perfecting for so many years. Wendy, as young as she is, is as sick with the disease as every other victim; but she is a child, and, from countless experiments, she is the infected who had the least amount of resistance during the passing of the contagion. If the infected is an adult, the uninfected could fight back without remorse. If the infected is an adolescent, however… Well, Wendy was made. Today, the greatest Slayer of my generation will become his worst enemy—a zombie. I’ll give him one last privilege. I shall hand him the gift of seeing his beloved one more time before his painful, Administration-provided demise. I will break them, no matter the cost or consequences, with a stupid, wide grin on my face. We will rule the world. LOG CCCIV Generations have passed. I grow wearier. Every movement the Administration is another blow against us, every child they brainwash another enemy attacking us. I have melded my precious Z10 into Malaise’s own superweapon. Joli has made our defenses stronger than ever, Gull has gathered more spies on the inside with her ever-so charming smile. For as many things have changed, history seems to have repeated itself. When we were attacked so many years ago, the Administration attempted to weed out the weak, the puppet we manipulate known as Delia. They sent over their greatest Slayer, Endor McClain, to murder her and steal my notes, their one hope at destroying my virus from the face of the globe instantly. Endor failed, bringing himself to us like a pig awaiting slaughter, and thus, the Administration lost their best assassin to the illness they so helplessly desire to raze. Decades into the future, now, the Administration has gotten arrogant once more. They believe they have the technology and resources necessary to complete the mission they’d crashed into the ground with McClain. They’ve sent his daughter, a young girl kept under the wing of Carla Montgomery herself, to finish the job her father could not. I can hear the clock ticking, can hear the screams of the damned from the cells below. The girl calls herself “Talon,” without knowing the name her parents properly gave her; I shall honor their memory. Joli, with as the same twisted kind of humor as I, deemed this Project Diana, after the girl Endor’s daughter would have been without Malaise’s interference. The brat should feel grateful—we’ve only made her stronger. Without the brace of a parent’s arms surrounding her, she felt Reality’s cruelty blow by blow until she could endure it, or better, fight back. She is a quiet personality, with a fire in her eyes that could only be from Endor’s child. We watched her since she left her training grounds, an Administration facility housing dozens of little Slayers who can barely hold a blade. She left alone. She was cunning, without a doubt. She fell for none of our traps, none of the protective barriers that have ensnared so many of her kind. She cleared the courtyard with silent slashes of her black Jupiter dagger, ensuring to keep as low as possible to never catch the glint of our cameras. The Administration does not know of our birdie system, a mechanism planted in the skies, with flying drones acting as sentries unseen to the human eye. Had they known, they would’ve trained her as well as they’ve taught her everything else. A sad sight to observe. Another intelligent, focused mind, completely overtaken by the deftly, dancing fingertips of the Administration. She is completely at their mercy, trusting her own people to stand beside her. The General has been keeping information from her. Why, I am unsure; for one thing is certain, her naïveté has hurt her more than she has ever known. Joli, as a commander who respects skill in the battlefield, let her sneak closer, let her slink passed all our guards until she reached the bedroom walls of Delia Gull. He then reinforced the locks on her door, and all the entryways into the hallway, ordering every member of Malaise in that wing to leave as quickly as possible. Oblivious to the happenings around her, Talon—originally meant to be Diana; her father, in his final moments as human, called out, “Reyna… Diana…” Reyna McClain was the brilliant scientist he was married to, who, too, fell victim to our undying power over the world—pulled out an encryptor to try to access the codes that locked the doors shut. Joli allowed her a few moments, a few precious last moments, before commanding me to gift her with the same fate as her father: to flood the hallway with Z10 gas and let her become as mindless and inhumane as the monsters she supposedly hunts. I follow his behest. I am told the beginnings of Z10 is the smell—a grotesque, unforgettable smell one could sniff through walls. Talon recognizes it well. The second Z10 began pouring into the hallway, her head snapped up. She narrowed her eyes at the hallway, since she’d annihilated the cameras beforehand, wondering how and when and why. She commenced working twice as hard to get the damn door open, fear clear as day in her dark irises. Joli and I watched, with our crew behind us, as Diana McClain began to lose her mind. When the gas, green and slow-moving, reached her, she was slamming her fists against the metal doorway, begging to the gods above to save her from this doom. In her desperation, she forgot about her weaponry; it couldn’t have gotten the door open, or mystically floated her away toward a nirvana without zombies, but it was the only way that could’ve possibly saved her from the virus. The virus cannot inhibit the dead, as much as false rumors made by social media go. They are not deceased, they are beings without morals, sanity, or humanity. It removes them from the rest of the world, and causes their own kind to turn against each other. Talon, the assassin that could’ve been great, knew this. She coughed on screen, clutching her stomach and attempting to hold her breath as long as possible. She blacked out from lack of oxygen, and submitted to the fate of the McClains: an adroit mind decaying too soon. I emptied out the gas at my husband’s demand, with mercenaries with gas masks—can never be too careful—marching in and dragging the Slayer to her cell, the very same one Endor was tortured in. Like father, like daughter, every single time. CAPTURE POINT I: Bittersweet In a worst case scenario where I’ll be forced to reanalyze this memories, or capture points of my life, I’ve decided to label them in a way that clearly reflects what I’m thinking at any given point in time. So many people are silent of their thoughts, so many people keep quiet over opinions that could change the world, so many people hesitate to step forward and say what they are thinking. So many people lose who they are as they develop, as they slowly become a person who they want to be or who others want them to be. I’ve decided to start this journal in an attempt to contradict this, to keep a piece of me everywhere I am in every point I need it. It’s a great mantra, or so Geneva tells me, and I’m glad to have begun it this way. Today I’ve turned seventeen, my dear memory book, but, unfortunately, it’s not all rainbows and flavored slop from here. Ever since I was a little girl, I’d dreamed of joining the Gray’s Best in the laboratory they keep secret until one becomes of age. I’ve always dreamed of helping humanity with its fight against Malaise, with helping save lives that haven’t ever deserved the punishments they’ve been given. I always wanted to make a difference, you know? Today’s the day that was meant to change me, to make me worthy of being a voyager, of a scientist who finds the Cure. Instead, I’m here, worried my butt off, because Talon has been missing for six months. You don’t know her. She’s, uh, she’s a personality, definitely. She’s a walking paradox. She’s quiet, silent as a mouse sometimes, but the second she disagrees with something, she’s up-in-arms and won’t back down for anything. She acts all tough and emotionless, but she’s kind and appreciative when someone does a favor for her. She hates fighting, but does it because she believes that’s the best way to contribute to society. She’s the best at assassination, might as well assassinate, right? Well, this brave, but slightly in unknowledgeable in the science department, girl has been gone for have a year. Our leader, a motherlike figure called the General, has ordered scouts and observation missions to attempt to see where the Hell Talon had phased through reality so intensely we haven’t found her in the weeks we’d been looking for her. Carla, the General’s real name, hasn’t told the Gray what assignment she’d tried to complete that led to her capture. She hasn’t told us why she left, or where she was meant to go, or what she’d actually accomplished when she’d gotten there. Squat. Nada. And I hate being kept in the bloody dark. Unrelated but kind of related, I have friends. They’re considered members of the top tier skill-level in all of the Training System, including a majority of the veterans here. First, we have Primus, the best male soldier/Slayer in the System. Then Talon, the best female soldier/Slayer, as I’ve all ready told thou. Then Elle, the best non-gendered scientist who’s wicked with a scalpel; and Criss, the best male scientist who’s reputation is a mixture of intelligence and inappropriateness. Very close to our top tier, but barely second-best (though I would never call them that as an insult; it was just factual; a slightly depressing fact, but a fact all the same) were two people, a girl and a guy. Trinity, a really sweet, smart girl who doesn’t deserve to be stuck in the Communications chair all the time (oh, yeah, she’s also Primus’s girlfriend—they’re adorable together), and Jack, a dude absolutely deadly with a garrote and some pliers. We’re a tight knit of friends, as usually other people outside our own caliber are too intimidated to ever become close with us. We’re a team, an unstoppable moving machine, whole with each other and no gear is more useful than the others. Which is why we are all tragically upset when we discovered Talon had gone missing. It’s pretty obvious around here that Primus is like a big brother to her, and to me, so he’s always on top of us whenever we do something dangerous—in my case, it’s mixing two possibly explosion-causing chemicals together, and in Talon’s, it’s Slayer missions. Primus was the first to be told Talon was gone, and the news quickly circulated until it reached all of the Best, with Trinity and Jack included, and the rest of the damn school. Considering they were the closest to Talon, Primus and Jack have been arguing with the General nonstop, in a pitiful attempt to try to get more information behind Talon’s disappearance. In the lab, Elle, Criss, and I have created a trial antidote, a crude, possibly-possible version of the Cure. We’re more determined than we’ve ever been to find this world-changing corrective. If our theories are right, the pessimistic, very likely ones that we hope to whatever God that’s still listening, and Malaise has taken Talon, and have done who-knows-what to her, we have to prepared for the worst. We have to find a way to save her, we will find a way to save her. We’d all die first before giving up on her. I hope we won’t have to. Harmony CAPTURE POINT VI: Nightmare Malaise left us a gift last night. While the midnight patrols were wondering, a hover van we haven’t been able to power since the outbreak started pulled up, and dumped an object onto the ground: this larger-than-supposedly-possible, black, sport’s bag (which were not used for sports anymore, mainly for stashing of weapons and clothing and maybe food, if the time came to it). The van casually gravitated away, like it wasn’t the most suspicious thing the System has seen in a long while. Carefully, very carefully, the guards took the bag inside, summoned Geneva and the General, and planted it on the Gray’s emptiest table—and even that still had leftover beakers we had to push aside. Jack Fry was hailed, in case there was a bomb that needed defusing. Primus was hailed, in case it was a failed experiment that needed some whacking. Me, Criss, and Elle were called because we were the Best, and the Best could solve any issue with science and bloodshed—at least, that’s what Carla thinks. A few soldiers I didn’t recognize opened the bag, as cautious as a man to a rabid animal would be. Primus tapped his foot in anticipation; I echoed his movements. (I used to admire him and Talon like they were the best thing since sliced bread. To show my appreciation, I used to copy their every move, eventually developing their own unhealthy mannerisms. Old habits are difficult to break.) Everything happened so slowly, so time-bendingly slow, I felt like I was in one of those old action movies from the twenty-first century. The first thing I heard was a groan, a pained, almost tired groan, like a person who’d gone hunting the previous day and was sore while they woke up. Then I saw shifting, barely-there shifting you’d only notice if you were watching, and arms appeared like spindly spider legs. The faceless goons held it down, strapping its arms to the table like a BDSM post-apocalyptic roleplay. They yanked off the bag completely, and unveiled the most horrific sight I’ve ever seen. It was Talon. Her skin was pale, almost green in color, literally drained of blood. She was licking her teeth, purple and rotting, like she’d just eaten a fine meal of magenta barbecue. She growled deep in her throat, hissing, like a monster wanting to set loose. This wasn’t the girl who’d helped me in training, guiding my arm gently so I’d hit bullseye and leave as quickly as possible. This wasn’t the girl who’d cried when we threw her a birthday party, who’d started sobbing when big brother Primus said he was proud of her. This wasn’t the quiet, sharp-witted, brutally cynical girl I’ve known as far as I can remember. This was a zombie, haunting the husk of what was once the woman I’d looked up to most. Everyone froze, staring at the Z10 victim with the exact same horror and dread as anyone who’d known her. She spoke, voice cracking, in a language I didn’t understand, and I couldn’t help but shiver in my boots. The General was the first to move, shaking her head like this was only a bad dream she had to get over. She, as detached and cool-headed as ever, asked me, Elle, and Criss, if the magic bullet we were working on was ready for deployment. We all glanced at each other and nodded—anything to save Talon, anything to save another life from Malaise’s greedy, diabolical hands. If I saw Primus sneaking out of the System like a try-hard ninja because I was returning from the little lady’s room, then I can only say this: We will make the Cure and defeat Malaise, even if it kills us. (Which it might.) Harmony CAPTURE POINT VII: Recovery She’s back. Well, kind of. In the middle of the night with little help, a few soldiers properly held down Talon as she was stripped from her bag and tied to a metal medical slab. Me, Criss, and Elle all ran to our stations, preparing everything from a heart monitor—would that even work on a zombie?—to the fateful syringe that would determine the life of the Administration’s best assassin. Elle was chosen as the one to inject the growling girl, as my hands were shaking so bad I could barely hand over the needle and Criss was too busy bonding with Jack in an attempt to find where Primus had disappeared the previous night. Elle gently picked up the loosely-hanging wrist from the table and readied the hypodermic. I buried my face into Geneva’s stomach, anxious beyond belief and unable to watch the events unfolding in front of me. After the Trial Cure (which is what we called it, as there wasn’t any kind of evidence pointing failure or success yet) was injected, it took twelve hours before the medicine began to kick in. Twelve hours! During that time, me, Elle, and Criss took shifts of watching the zombie Talon, to make sure of a few things: a) she wasn’t trying to escape, and b) the chemicals weren’t killing her. The General dragged Geneva away from the lab, ordering the soldiers to ensure no one could get in if they were not permitted—everyone but the Best and Jack, essentially. (Trinity got left out of everything! I didn’t pity her in this case, though. I wouldn’t wish this experience on my worst enemy.) Primus magically materialized at Criss’s side, making the scientist scream and Jack laugh. Jack interrogated Primus for hours on end, questioning on everything he’d done in the hours he was gone. Primus deflected all of those, focusing mainly on checking on Talon and guarding the doors. The poor dude felt as foreboding as the rest of us, especially with his closeness to the girl in question and his history with Malaise; his mother, a pretty, intelligent woman, abandoned him to the wolves when she joined Malaise before I was even born. Primus, out of the blue, asks the General sometimes if there was any news regarding a woman called Katherine O’Vile. I don’t find it a coincidence that a woman who deserted her own son for an organization that decimated half the planet had the surname O’Vile. Anyway, back to Talon. After the twelve hours were up, weird results were showing up in our feeds. Jack was processing them, being the tech guru that he is—with the lack of tech left, I’m surprised anyone can become a tech guru anymore, but he is—and he instantly called us, unsure of the readings he was getting. Elle was on shift, so they woke up Criss and I, and I ran to get Primus as Criss checked the science on screen. When I returned with the Slayer, Criss had a very particular look of concentration on his face, the furrow of his eyebrows confused. Jack tapped his foot in anticipation, bouncing his fingertips along his knee. I felt tempted to join him, to do something, anything, to express this built-up energy inside me. Criss, finally, spoke up, and he simply told us to summon the General for a proper debriefing. Anticlimactic, to say the least. We did as he commanded, staring him down in an attempt to read him; were the results good? Were they so terrible he needed to tell the General and all of us at the same time to bring forth the disappointment all at once? In our waiting, I started to watch Talon again. She was quiet, knocked out, and she appeared as pale as a ghost, and less as pale as moldy cheese. Every rise and fall of her chest opened her mouth, showing off the still-purple, horrid teeth of hers. She wore an orange jumpsuit, which only confirmed our theory that she was taken prisoner. I couldn’t imagine that this girl had been through, and my heart only aches for her. Imagine being forced to become the thing you hated most. I shuddered at the thought. I tried to imagine Talon’s mind at the moment. Was she still there? Was the Talon we all knew and loved still present, just forced into the back burner, screaming at the top of her lungs for someone to save her? Or did the Z10 virus turn her into this, a shell of her former self that only craved flesh and destruction? I had too many questions, and no one to answer me. I wonder if Talon could answer them. When Carla arrived, Criss gave us all amazing news. The serum we’d injected into her had worked—cue cheering—but only partially—cue confused, half-hearted cheering. Our “Cure” only happened to cure one half of the problem, her inhumanity. While Z10 enhances the part of your brain that your conscience deems “inhumane,” our little experiment reverts those enhancements. It reinforces the section that rejects your humanity, where Z10 weakens it. However, the second part, the part where you gain the irresistible urge to become a cannibal is still present, which is still a massive problem. We’ve restored Talon’s mind, the intelligent, sarcastic girl we’ve all known, but she’s in a similar condition to the stories of vampires of old—craving human blood, but otherwise decently intelligent and normal. She has yet to awaken, but when she does… oh boy. She’s gonna have a field day with this. Wish us all luck. I think we’ll need it. Harmony ENTRY LXIIII I hate my life.

A Tale More Complicated Than One Person Can Tell, by alizaarches 

Summary: Post-apocalyptic world with multiple point of views telling the story of a girl named Talon.

Inspired by: A conversation with @heyoitsdavid, who I have weird-ass convos with. We were talking about the zombie apocalypse and shiz, and he happened to bring up the concept of a zombie assassin. I loved the idea, and look at where we ended up.

This is the longest piece of writing I’ve ever written for one story. 11315 is my new record. Over 10k! I’m actually freaking shocked I did this. Sorry I’m a lil late, but I finished this like ten minutes before five, and I usually have to write an author’s note and stuff, so…

I’ve also made a lot of references—allusions—in this story, so beware. One includes the fact that Jack and Evelyn Fry have very similar spelt names to Jacob and Evie Frye of the Assassin’s Creed Universe. I’m pretty damn happy with this one. I also kind of want to add a mini section to this piece in the near future, so… ;)

I also wrote the majority of this on my phone! Which is shocking, because usually I write like shiz on my phone, but here we are. In addition, I wanted to try a different format than what I usually do, so I picked the typical “journal entry.”

[alizaarches]

A mansion sat in the shadows. The skies were iron gray, clouds covering the bare sunlight of the county. Long below, down winding stairways and black, locked gates, a city jolted with excitement. Women wore silver Columbina masks and purple dresses, men were decorated with ivory tuxedos and gold Voltos. Performances echoed through the plaza, elegant movements flowing into each other as applause roared through the crowd. From above, from the highest point of the small country, the manor intimidated anyone who dare look upon it. Legends were spoken, rumors were spread, and Drury Palace continued staring over the district for eternity. Within the long, dark, empty halls of the mansion, paintings were hung on the walls. Railings were dusty, the fireplace was cold, and the furniture was if no one had lived there at all. Listening to the commotion of the utopia he’d once adored, a lonely artist sat on the fluffiest chair he’d been given. He bit continuously on one fingernail until it became the color of her lipstick, and closed his eyes in misery. He thought back to centuries ago, when he was the happiest he’d ever been—when he’d met those he loved most. In the beginning, it was a man. As Eros lived life as a being that never died, he’d sworn off interaction with humans completely. Mortals were fragile, young, and passed long before he could ever understand. However, as every single immortal he’d known, in pop culture or otherwise, he fell victim to the spell that was humanity. He’d fallen head over heels for a man’s laughter, for the mischievous glint in his eye, for the curve of his lips whenever he felt amusement. Eros fell, dangerously and painfully, for a man called Dean, and paid the price for it. He knew his relationship would not last—at most, it would last Dean’s entire lifetime, if the beautiful stargazer would have him for that long—but he had not anticipated the lack of time he’d gotten. The two were engaged, giddy and eager, when Dean was killed by homophobia extremists. Eros was stabbed in the heart, not nearly as literally as his poor, deceased beloved. Dean’s family was very kind to him, never blaming him for the death of the one they all simultaneously loved with all they had. Tears streamed down his face at the funeral, sorrow clinging onto him with such a ferocity, Eros was powerless to stop it. With a final kiss and sob, Eros disappeared, never to be seen by the people who’d known Dean ever again. Eros, despite being named ironically after the god of love and lust, had little to no luck in his namesake’s departments. Again, he vowed to stay away from mortals, from the pain of loss when a lifespan was finished, from the love he felt that compared to nothing else. Again, he failed. In a different part of the world, in a different lifetime, he’d met a woman named Isabella. Once more, unwisely and familiar, he fell. He fell for the passion of her artistry, the determined spark in her eye, and the unlimited kindness she gave people like wrapped gifts. This time, Eros did not even get the chance to attempt to marry her. Isabella was murdered in a women’s rights assembly, when a racist pulled the trigger toward a dark-skinned female, and the police mistakenly thought it was time to begin firing. Eros had not put a ring on her finger, but that did not mean the agony of her passing hurt any less, or that he loved her any amount fewer than he did Dean. Her family was not as kind: they hissed of her only asking for her own demise, traveling to the naïve women’s gathering, speaking as if it were a childish game she’d been playing, instead of an issue that was only emphasized by their attitude. They did not look at him, as he had vehemently declared he wholeheartedly supported the actions she’d taken to make a wheel begin turning, and she was not immature for desiring a change in the world. Her funeral was less humble than Dean’s, less quiet and somber (with idiotic opinions of her last moments being expressed, instead of grief for a great woman), but nonetheless played with Eros’s heartstrings. He’d fallen in love twice, with two completely different people with two completely different upbringings and agendas, and yet, he’d lost them both. With a final soft kiss and tear on her once-rosy cheek, he disappeared, ignoring the sly comments on his way out. He never returned. To isolate himself from the human world, he built his own mansion from the ground, up. He’d collected his own concrete, he’d melted his own glass chandeliers, crafted everything in his home from scratch. It took several, several years, with agonizing detail for one person to construct. He had to ask for help from various experts in the fields he was mimicking, but he insisted on doing every miniscule thing by himself. It kept him away for a long time, at the very least. However, once his dream house was finished, he had nothing left to distract him from the cruel, never-ending world he lived in. He filled the library with thousand-page books and finished them; he made his own astrograph and stuffed his files full of photos; he memorized ancient plays and performed them as a one-man recital. (Yes, he knew his life was lonely and depressing, it was nothing he hadn’t done or seen before.) The final hobby he chose to pick up was painting. He painted numerous aspects of his own life, including the twinkling lights of the city below, the view of a sunset from his bedroom, a lit candle in the reflection of a mirror, and, his proudest creations, his former lovers, Dean and Isabella. On entirely separate sides of the parlor, waist-high depictions of Dean’s smirk and Isabella’s fiery eyes hooked on hangers as a very pleased and arrogant display of Eros’s finest work. Every time he looked upon them, he felt two emotions battle in his chest: instantaneous misery and love. He’d loved and lost, and this was better than to have never loved at all. He chuckled bitterly to himself. The life of an immortal was never a particularly happy one, and he had to live with that. He gazed at the walls again, saw the stargazer and the egalitarian, and smiled. There was one thing his beloveds had in common, and that was their tendency to dream. With a clearing of his throat, he made a split-second decision he was sure to change his boring, secluded life forever. He stood from his chair, strode to the front gate, and flung the large, intimidating doors wide open. The city below gasped, shocked and afraid, as the manor had not opened in decades, let alone have a tall, dark, and handsome standing in its doorway. He felt the familiar exhilaration of extraversion, and spread his arms in an inviting manner. He invited them inside to dance to their celebration in style, with a booming voice that flooded the ears of every citizen nearby. With an immediate shrug and shout, the crowd of partygoers began storming through the previously-forbidden chateau with the grace only a thousand drunkards could have. Right before the revelers marched inside, Eros could almost feel Dean and Isabella begin swaying to the music, just as they once did. Drury Palace was lively once more.

Remember, Remember. . . by alizaarches

Summary: An immortal man reminisces on his terrible luck on the subject of love.

(I have a thing for immortals, apparently. Hehe.)

Happy Pride Month, everyone! I’ve had this idea on my mind for a very long time. Years. Years! Anyway, I’ve had the idea of “an immortal man who’s loved a man and a woman” on my mind, and I’ve just recently decided to write it! (In my head, I will always picture Eros as Steve, Dean as Bucky, and Isabella as Peggy. Just sayin’.) I also wanted to write something for pride, so I figured I might as well! My original idea was this weird dance thing: all the characters were nameless and it was this three-person dance routine of a lonely, immortal man who loved and lost, with his two former lovers dancing (use your imagination, it’s a gentle routine, I promise), almost in a ballet-esque way. I struggled to find a way to write this, as dance is something to see, not to read, so I simply told the tragic love story of Eros Drury. I feel bad for him. He really does have a terrible love life.

I’d also like to give credit to BrizzyVoices for the title of this lil story. She, in her Overwatch impressions video, was imitating the character Junkrat, and just said, “Remember, remember . . . what the heck was I saying again?” When I was trying to name this story, I considered things like “The Memories of an Immortal Man” or such, but I wanted a different phrasing for this one, so I just used her wording, “Remember, Remember . . .”

(Have an early story to make up for my lateness last week! I also wanted to upload this in pride month, and Sunday—my regular uploading time—is July 2nd, so. . .)

[alizaarches]

Goggles covered chocolate brown eyes, leaving him to push the curly strands of his hair manually. He bit his tongue in concentration, refusing to take his eyes off his masterpiece for a millisecond. This was for her, he reminded himself. It was all for her. It was decently quiet in the mechanic garage, with only the sounds of sparks and his own heavy breathing to accompany him. Shelves were stuffed to the brim with every kind of wire, bolt, and tool known on the face of the planet. Failed experimental equations were strewn across sheets of paper, scattered on the ground. The terminal door was shut, with only the lights of candlesticks and oil lamps to illuminate the damp, drafty, dark place he called home. Car tires dotted the walls like medallions, with degrees of engineering genius framed and shown proudly alongside them. At his desk, photos were on display: a golden retriever with a red rubber ball squeezed in its open mouth; a woman with dark brown hair and freckles with an arm around a little boy, around six or so, beaming up at the camera; a beautiful lady with long auburn hair and bright green eyes was draped across the mechanic himself, both of them relaxed and happy. Charlie tore himself away from that train of thought—the life he’d once had was over. He had to get over that. He continued working on his newly dubbed “life-altering time trial”, when a phone rang. He sighed, placing down the object, shoved back his goggles, and wondered who the Hell would call him at 3 o’clock in the morning. Checking the ID, he was not surprised in the slightest. Irritated, he answered the call, knowing she would simply spam him until he responded. “What do you want, Piper?” he asked straightaway, knowing she could hear the ‘if it’s not important, I’ll kill you’ tone of his voice. “Now, now,” Piper said, amusement coloring her manner. “Don’t get so feisty, little brother. I might call your Alexandria on you.” He shut his eyes, sighing. “We broke up, Piper. I told you that.” “But you’re still as bloody head over heels as always for her, aren’t you?” His silence was enough to gain her satisfaction. “Exactly. C’mon. Be nice to your big sister who loves you!” “Why are you calling me at three a.m., Piper?” “Because.” Mentally, he slowly counted to ten. He glanced over his shoulder, spotting the glowing experimental orb he was working on. Piper didn’t know who “Alexandria” really was, and he preferred to keep it that way. The web was all ready tangled, it didn’t need more lines attached. Charlie could remember times when he and Piper were children, when his sister had constantly needed to know everything going on in his life. She’d poked and prodded until she knew his friends, his teachers, his crush, how he spent his damn time during recess. She’d been nosy as hell, annoying as hell, and loving as hell. On his first day of high school, she’d dropped him off in their mother’s Honda and blasted “Hollaback Girl” for everyone in a three-mile radius to hear. On his first day of the job, she’d rode in and demanded her old pocketwatch to be fixed, even though Georgie’s was mainly a car repair shop. His superior, Lara, giggled madly at him, snatching the Omega from Piper’s sneaky little fingers and listening to Charlie’s pleads of fixing it as quickly as possible. Piper had loved playing the role of the humiliating sibling, no matter how much he promised to strangle her. Now, he only wanted to keep her from the messed-up life he got himself involved in. Piper London had a separate existence besides her little brother, after all. “Piper,” he emphasized. “This is a useless conversation. I need to get back to work.” “Work?” She said, concern explicit through the phone. “Charlie, it’s three in the morning. What’re you doing?” “Client wants it for sunrise tomorrow. I can’t rest until it’s done or else she’ll kill me.” If Charlie knew anything about himself, he would call himself an expert at lying by omission. In the sentence he’d just spoken, he never lied straightforwardly. Everything he’d said was true. He simply omitted information from her. She would assume the client would be an obnoxious rich dude that wanted his Lambo ready by sunrise to cheat on his model wife with her sister with, and she would assume the “she” was Lara. He chose to let her think of her false axioms, didn’t correct her misconceptions. He had a talent of telling the certainty of a situation, with important holes of information in between. “Charlie.” Her voice was as condescending as it was completely unconvinced by his statements. “You have to go to sleep! If Lara wants this project done so bad, she can do it herself.” “There’s no reason to stop now, when the project is almost done.” Not technically a lie. Before she could begin her the You Never Take Care of Yourself tirade—she tended to call him an obsessive workaholic, as if she didn’t have a fear of inactivity herself—a flash sounded on the outside of his garage door. Without his doing, the large gate was flung upward, with the force of a thousand bodybuilders. In the darkness of the three a.m. daylight, Charlie noticed a woman. A staff of ironwood was splayed across her back, like a silhouette of a long, thin cylinder. Flat-bottomed faux-feather boots were worn on her feet, a short dark purple dress with her dark belt hanging loosely off her slender body, her pale skin glowing beautifully. Her curly red hair flowed down her back, her green eyes sparking like the embers of Greek fire. Her dark jacket was gracefully over her shoulders, standing with the elegance of a modern gladiatrix-Amazon hybrid. “Um,” stumbled Charlie, forgetting about his sister for all of one moment. “I’ll chat with you later, Pipes. Got to go.” Without waiting a response from her—which probably would’ve consisted on her keeping him for another hour, fully abusing her Ravenclaw persuasion techniques—he hung up. He self-consciously fumbled with the goggles on his forehead, his thoughts rapidly traversing a million meters an hour, before approaching the woman his sister called Alexandria. She relaxed ever so slightly after she saw him very clearly dismiss who he was speaking to. She was a very jealous type. (He forced his conscious to remind him that she had no right to be jealous, that she shattered his heart to pieces, that she didn’t deserve him—) Charlie cleared his throat and crossed his arms defensively, raising an eyebrow. It was rare when she visited without him summoning her—especially since he hadn’t finished her enterprise. She saw his anticipation and straightened her back, striding passed him like the world was her red carpet. He tried not to notice the sudden upward rise of her outfit, and the softness of her thighs. He chided himself by inwardly cursing himself, and followed her confidently, completely unlike a lost puppy. She strolled directly to the Shard, laying casually in the tripod he’d created for it. It blazed as orange as the cinders of a torch, silver outlining as gleaming as a coin, magic irradiating from it in visual waves. She outstretched her arms, as expecting and adoring as Charlie was to Piper’s Pitbull, Bella. She hovered her hands, barely a finger’s length away. Her emerald irises flared hungrily, rings of hazel displaying to everyone just how powerful she was. “You haven’t finished.” It wasn’t a question. He fidgeted a little. “What’re you doing here?” She turned to look at him. She was still centimeters shorter than him, with light freckles flayed across her cheeks. He remembered when they were still together, before he knew who and what she was, she used to smile at him like she loved him, like he was her guardian angel. He remembered when she was Alexandria Grace, a pretty redhead who loved animals and fantasy more than reality. She had dreams beyond his imagining, ambition in spades, and eyes as green as a dragon’s scales. She was different when he’d known her as human, but he didn’t know if that was dilemmatic or not. She tilted her head. “Am I unwelcome?” “Never,” he admitted. “But . . . you’ve never shown yourself without me calling you first. You haven’t appeared without my summoning since before you . . .” He trailed off. “Since I became Artemis,” she finished. He gazed down at her. Artemis was more formal than Alexandria, more forced to accept responsibility for what she was, more cold and distant. “You left, Alex. You’re back, suddenly, and now you want me to fix this ancient artifact from the shadow realm. You’re a bloody witch, Alex. A witch! An immortal one, at that. Did you expect me to not be fazed by any of this?” He was flinging his arms around as he ranted. She pursed her lips. “I am Artemis now. I’ve morphed into a more powerful being than my human form ever could be. I loved you, Charlie London. The life we once shared is gone. I’m sorry for that.” His heart panged in his chest like a pinball machine. It wasn’t the reaction he’d wanted to hear. Pathetically, he’d been hoping (no matter how unlikely he knew it’d be) she’d hug him, confess she still cared for him, and stay with him. Instead, he’d been smacked in the face with reality and how brutally naïve his desires were. He still loved her—if he didn’t, he probably would’ve taken her Shard project and slammed it into the ground, cursing her to the Hell she’d come from. He desperately wished for Alexandria, for the kind girl who couldn’t care less about being the most powerful witch in history. He swallowed back his emotions, and pushed passed Artemis. He admired the Shard, unsure whether to thank it or swear at it for bringing the woman he loved back to him. “What is this?” he whispered. Artemis repositioned her posture to study him closer. He could still read her like a book: She wanted to know why he cared, and why he hasn’t ripped the Shard from its prop and kicked her out of his workplace. She took a piece of her Merida locks and started braiding it. It was a habit Alexandria used to do—she claimed it was because she needed something to do with her hands; she mainly did it when she was bored, or anxious. His lips curled a little at the familiar movement, but he listened carefully when she spoke. “That,” she said, “is a Shard.” He snorted when he realized she wouldn’t say anything more. “Yes?” he prompted. She tossed the thin braid toward the back of her head and began a new one. “‘The Shard is a supernatural triangle-shaped instrument that can provide an easy gateway to multiple dimensions for mortal beings.’ Essentially, it’s the only way a human could ever travel to the shadow realm, or places only the Wraith could go. With it, you can journey to the past, the future, or forks in the road where the butterfly effect is prevalent.” She gestured with one of her hands and then continued her braiding adventure. “Let’s say you have a decision to make. You have two choices. You choose one walkway of life. With the Shard, you can go to the future where you made the other choice. It’s a dangerous, cantankerous, and extremely powerful bit of equipment.” “And you broke it,” Charlie commented. He wasn’t surprised in the slightest. It was no secret Alexandria found thrill in living on the edge, doing things like chucking a wine glass in the air and see how well she could catch it—for fun. It wasn’t shocking to know she dismissed the power of a dimension-jumping artifact to prove a point. Artemis huffed. Her face was framed with stiff, wiry plaits like dreadlock bangs. She shoved them all behind one ear, in an attempt to look professional, but it only made her seem more like the human she’d once been. She unhooked her staff from her back and pointed it at his heart. “I did not break it,” she informed him. “I don’t think an object as strong as one that could cause a rift in the universe would break itself, Artemis.” She rolled her candy apple green eyes and pressed the ironwood harder against his chest. “I didn’t break it,” she insisted. She sheathed her two-meter baton back into is wrap on her spine. “My sister . . .” “Your sister?” he asked, intrigued. Even Alexandria had hated speaking of her family. Before she’d fully transformed, she’d told him she lost contact with her parents when she chose to live among mortals, instead of her fellow witches in crime. She wanted to protect her sister from ever having to make that decision. “Her name is Hestia,” she explained, as if that was vital information for him to treasure ultimately. “My younger, pain-in-the-bosom sister. She has a special habit of causing trouble throughout the world of witches. She believes in a morale that lets newly appointed choose routes other than performing magic. In an attempt to support this philosophy, she joined this . . . clique, called the Keepers. The Keepers’ leader, Dawn, gave my sister a mission. She was to steal one of the three Shards of Life from the Wraith, an all-powerful being who rules over the shadow realm and chooses the most powerful as his reapers to do his bidding. She did it. She stole it. I didn’t know whether to be proud of ashamed of her.” She chuckled bitterly. “To complete her mission, Dawn told her to destroy the Shard for good. Hestia shattered it to a point of almost no return. For her actions, she was arrested and put in the Wraith’s underworld brig. The only way to set her free was to . . .” Charlie’s eyes widened in realization. While they were dating, Alexandria was absolutely addicted with a law-based show called Curiae. The protagonist Curiae followed cases that were seemingly impossible to defend or convict, with many lawsuits leaving innocents dead or villains alive. Her favorite quote was from an episode from the show’s final season, when Curiae was forced to acquire help from his worst enemy and suspected former lover, Lorraine. The human-turned-witch adored reciting Curiae’s famous line whenever semi-convenient for her; mainly whenever she broke her diet and needed a barely legitimate excuse for doing so. “‘Sometimes, the best way to save an angel is to dance with the devil.’” Artemis’s shoulders slumped as she stared at her shoes, as if she was reminiscing on those nostalgic memories as well. “I left,” she said, very reluctantly, like she was admitting a deep, dark secret, “to save an angel.” “You left to rescue your sister,” he said, feeling a mix of every emotion possible. He didn’t know what to think of this girl standing in front of him. She was selfish and selfless simultaneously, she was infuriating yet loving. She was too much for him and not enough. He was still bloody in love with her, and hated that she could never love him the same way. As if snapping herself out of a trance, she spun around so she faced away from him. Her fingers twitched, curling like they wanted to grab her staff and/or punch Charlie in the nose. She sighed. Without twisting back, she spoke, exasperated. “Can you fix the Shard by sunrise?” Pieces of a puzzle were connecting inside Charlie’s mind. Events were actually making sense, in the bizarre reality that was his life. “The Wraith made you do all of this. The Wraith made you become Artemis. The Wraith kidnapped your bloody sister!” Artemis walked to the still-open garage doors without answering him. She unsheathed her ironwood once more, the darkness on the outside finally dissipating into a flood of red-orange and rosy-pink. The skyline of the city was awakening, tall skyscrapers shining with artificial light and the shadows of dentistry-promoting billboards hanging over the streets like an impending doom. Dismissive, blasé folk casually walked the streets, ignoring the warrior storming out of Georgie’s and the confused man behind her. Lives were beginning, so the witch could not stay. Artemis drew a giant square in the air, the gold magic of her staff gleaming like a lightning strike. She paused for a moment. “I’m sorry, Charlie,” she told him. “After tomorrow, you will never see me again.” He thought over and over again of how exactly to respond to that statement. He could scream childishly and tell her even if she did come back, he would send her to the curb. He could comment resentfully of how she only ever returned to him because she needed something from him. He could beg her to stay, confessing how he still loved her and how he needed her, and all-in-all guilt trip her in the most pathetic way possible. He could do so much, and yet . . . “Artemis, Alexandria, whoever you are,” he said, a small, sad smile grazing his face. “I hope you find your sister. I hope you find your happiness, even if it’s not with me.” He could see the scarlet of her hair, the Greek fire of her eyes, the ivory of her skin, the violet of her dress. He studied her, the girl who’d haunted his dreams with her laughter, and knew her declaration was true. He would never see her again. Her emerald green irises were sorrowful. She nodded. “Goodbye, Charlie London. I wish you a life without witches.” Her lips twitched at the attempt at humor. She closed her eyes, turned her back to the magical gateway, and fell. Charlie watched as she disappeared into the air like a whisper, hushed and unsatisfactory. He stood in the center of Georgie’s Workshop, staring into nothingness. He sighed, ran his fingers through the brown mop on his head, accidentally caught them on his goggles and nearly cut himself, and swore out loud. A woman passing with a young child gave him a dirty look, giving him a disapproving onceover. He quickly shut the large garage entryway, and the world was quiet once more. He strode over to the Shard—the interdimensional artifact potentially capable of destroying the universe with its immense, impossible power. The Shard was not manmade, thus could not be fixed by Artemis’s magic. It came from the deepest part of the shadow realm, the Wraith’s birthplace. Otherworldly magic would simply irritate the Shard, refusing to trust its user and, in the worst-case scenario, even attacking its wielder. Old fashioned mechanical techniques could succeed, in theory, and Charlie was the guinea pig. He scrutinized it from a distance, before sitting down at his workbench and continuing to weld, as if nothing had ever happened. *** In a far-off, distant place, a young girl slept. Her dark, labyrinthine tresses flowed across her pillow like a demonic halo. She was curled in a ball, her knees into her chest, with a single arm tucked under her cushion. Elegant fingertips circled a sharp silver knife, bloodied from former victims and accidental cuts. A shadowy, luminous figure stood at her cell doors, watching, listening to the pleads consuming the little girl’s elder sister. The fog with a hood known as the Wraith chuckled, a sound that boomed across planes of reality with the force of its might. It held up a sleeve, silencing the fowl with a single motion. In a voice only she could understand, it commanded her to remedy the evils her sister caused. It summoned the remainders, the bare minimum, of the broken Shard, and demanded it fixed by sunrise in a week, or her service toward him would extend a thousand years. The other condition was one she had no choice in obliging: become a witch, the destiny she’d constantly denied herself, and transform into an immortal. There could be no recovery from that. The Wraith’s amusement grew—if it took human form, its lips would be quirking upward. For how he lusted after Alexandria, the beauty she provided for the world, yet it knew of her feelings toward it: disgust, animosity, vengeance to save her sister from its wrath. The Wraith did only what it could do: it saw the happiness she was living with the boy—the mortal—and punished her for the sins her Hestia committed. She would either leave her sibling to rot in Hell’s incarceration for eternity, or sacrifice the one who loved her most. It could not ever have her, will never have her, and so this Charlie London could not have her either. Alexandria Grace would never be the same.

Magic, by alizaarches

Summary: An immortal witch is forced to revisit a life she left behind.

I’m so, so sorry, guys. I wanted to give you absolute quality, and I was really off this week. I finished it yesterday, the day I was meant to post it, but I hated it. Absolutely hated it. The writing was lazy, the story was meh, etc., etc. I needed to fix it, because I would’ve hated myself otherwise. I just recently finished editing it, and am finally satisfied with the results.

As usual, this story took an adventure to be written. The original idea I had was inspired by the Witch Mercy skin in the video game, Overwatch. So, clearly, Artemis was initially blonde, with a more revealing outfit, and her narrative was very different. She was already a witch at the beginning of the story, an immortal one, and she was flirting with the all-powerful Ghost (yes, instead of the Wraith, it was called the Ghost) to get something she wanted (I hadn’t decided what it was). The second incarnation of this story introduced Charlie London. Artemis was still blonde, and already an immortal witch, but she tried to “escape” the witch lifestyle. She fell in love with the moral man, Chase (yep, his name was first Chase) London. This version also contained a happy ending, with Artemis eventually marrying “Chase”. Finally, this form of Artemis was born. I was partially inspired by fictional mechanics like Dean Winchester (Supernatural) and Linh Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles—highly recommend, it’s a four-book sci-fi series with graphic novels and bonus content!). I really wanted to base a story in the city of London, even if the way they speak is severely inaccurate. (Charlie London lives in London, ha!) I also changed this version so Artemis “transformed” into becoming a witch, being a mortal in the beginning. It also has a bittersweet ending, as you can tell.

At the moment I’m writing this, it’s 10:44 p.m. Be grateful what I do for you people.

(Also, I realized that I have a thing for writing redheads. I love ginger people, and their freckled faces. . . . Sorry, you’re not objects, but I do want to put you in jars. ~Dan Howell)

[alizaarches]

My heart wants an open highway, filled with endless roads and joyful laughter. My heart wants to sing as loud as possible until my voice is sore, it wants to explore beyond this small, empty place. My heart wants more. I look to the skies, to the adventures so many are having, to the vibrant lives lived by so many, and I want more. I am holed up in a place where you need to drive to go to the nearest bookstore, where you need to go to the City for opportunities this little location does not provide you. I want more, and I cannot have more. I see the constant reminders that I never belonged here, that I was always meant for more. I see the distant, towering skyscrapers, and I long for more. I see a life I wish for, I see a life that was meant for me, and I want more. I want more than this little life. I want more than apple pies and picket fences and small, charming towns. I want large cities, vibrant laughter, opportunities to do the craziest things possible at my own time, at my own expense. I want to take risks, to live a life unknown and less traveled by. I want more, desperately, so much that I don’t know what I’d give to have it. Have you ever felt so suffocated, so full of want for something you cannot have, for something everyone discourages you from wanting? Have you ever glanced down a path no one has gone, imagined dreams so vivid you cry when you discover they were never real? Have you ever felt something so impossible to describe? Have you ever wanted more? Does it make me selfish? Does it make me idealistic, and foolish? Does it make me a terrible person, ambitious beyond what is meant for me? Does it make me petty, and cruel, and unable to connect to reality? Absolutely. Will it make me stop wanting more? Absolutely not. I see so many people settling for boring, unsatisfying lives for fear of failing, for fear of an inevitable fate, for fear of wanting more. I vow to never become one of them, I vow to never settle when I know I deserve more, and I can acquire more. I vow to never stop dreaming, imagining, hoping, longing. I see the life I live, and the thousands of lives unlived, and I want more.

Ambition Is A Fire In My Heart That I Can’t Extinguish, by alizaarches

Summary: Ambition is a blessing and a curse.

Inspiration Taken From: It’s My Life by Bon Jovi (my heart is like an open highway), Guren no Yumiya, the live action Beauty and the Beast (There must be more than this provincial life!), One Direction (I’ve got fire for a heart) and Supernatural (“What are you going to do? Just live some normal apple-pie life?” “Not normal. Safe.” from the Pilot).

Hello everyone! It’s been a helluva long time since I’ve written poetry, but it seemed appropriate. I was in NY this past weekend, and it just reminded me how much I want to live my life there, the way I’ve always dreamed. There was a pain I recognized as longing, and I started writing this poem in parts. Pardon if it’s a little choppy and disorganized, because that’s why. It was originally just lines I wrote down to make an altogether poem, so I didn’t make it flow as good as my other ones.

Either way, this was an expression of my own personal ambition, and I hope you enjoyed it.

(Thought while writing this: Is this why I’m a Slytherin? Because I won’t settle for the life I have?)

[alizaarches]

The man slammed his hands on the table. Veins were popping on his forehead, his hands knobby and callused, his royal Meeru amulet jiggling as he ranted on in frustration. “You let her go!” he shouted. “You bloody idiot! She’s an extremely valuable asset to the IGEN! She was our ticket to discovering the cure of Eratoxins! Do you know how money-heavy that would be the Earthens? To the Ralina? To the queen of Lujiv?” “Admiral … She is not packaged meat. She cannot be what we are looking for! She is only a Diva, of the Imperium. She is weak, and disorganized. She is not your Melaina.” The Admiral clenched his teeth together. Calmly, he spoke: “Laida … I’d watch your mouth. Do not forget what your family is indebted to me. Nonetheless, no girl will ever be my Melaina, though you flatter her, even in death. You would’ve made a good son to provide an heir, but now we only have the Tempest. Get her to me, and perhaps I will forgive your sins to me.” “With respect, sir, I must insist on abandoning your mission to find her. She escaped; she is more than capable of doing so again. She is not as powerful as you believe her to be; she is a poor replacement to Melaina. The IGEN has all ready chosen her to go on their next Minerva mission, in an attempt to regain peace with Lady Pensly. Tempest cannot do what you desire her to do.” The Admiral looked at him, eyes as cold as the planet they stood on, as red as suns that set. “Find her. Do not let me ask twice.” Laida bowed his head, knowing when he was gravely outgunned. “Yes, Admiral.” Before the Admiral could dismiss him, the door to the conference room slammed open. Guards piled in like prey from a predator, positioning themselves in front of their superior, letting Laida fend for himself. Justice Merden of the Eight Planets strolled into the chamber, closely flanked by a woman who captured the attention of the entire area. With long, knee-length golden locks, pale skin that reflected off the lights, and eyes as gold as the chandelier, she was undoubtedly a Diva, of the planet Deus, of Imperium. She held the smile lines of her face like badges of honor, as well as the scars of battlefield injuries and pregnancy that made her a stronger being altogether. It was a Tempest. Only, it was the wrong one. The Admiral walked around the mahogany table and knelt in a respectful Deus-only greeting. He smiled charmingly as he took the beautiful blonde by the hand. “Madame Tempest!” he said in English, for all his soldiers to understand. Laida wondered when English became the standard language of the universe. He noted that he was the only one who cared about the topic, and zoned back into the reality at hand. “You look beautiful,” the Admiral continued. “Emma,” corrected the woman. “Ah, Emma! A wonderful name for a wonderful woman.” Justice Merden rolled her eyes. “Enough, Victor. We have a task at hand. This is your messiah’s mother; I thought you would cut to the chase rather than butter her up like your evening meals.” Emma Tempest giggled, but said nothing. Laida thought of the months he’d spent looking for the youngest Tempest, looking for this savior the Admiral was willing to sacrifice everything for. Ever since Melaina was taken from them, he’d worked Laida to the bone, doing everything he could to prevent an extraordinary like Lena be killed again. Laida pondered if this mother—this Emma—was going to throw her daughter into the mixture like a pig for slaughter. He couldn’t tell if he wanted her to, or not. Admiral Victor (what?) glared at the Justice with murder in his gaze (most likely despising her for ruining his combat tactics), but returned to Emma with a smile. “I’m sorry, Miss Emma. The Justice is correct. I have … in simple terms, been searching for your daughter. See, my own Melaina was a talented soothsayer, and she earned that from her Meeru descendancy, and her own imagery gauntlet. She predicted a death of Eratoxins, and only a person of the most astonishing of healers can discover its cure. She gave us a name—Tempest. We traced the line to your family, a lineage of the Imperium, of Deus. In your entire galaxy, there has been only one successful healer—” “Doctor Aurora E. Tempest,” finished Emma. She was smiling. “Yes, I know. I’m quite proud of my daughter. What I do not appreciate is your keeping of her as a prisoner of war and forcing her to administer a cure to a disease that does not exist.” “On the contrary, Madame Tempest. It was discovered by a lab in Chicago X, of the Reya Galaxy, fifteen lightyears from here. It has no name, as of now, but my Melaina was never wrong in her predictions. They will name it Eratoxins from the abnormal blood poisoning flooding through the victim’s system. It is rapid, fatal, and caused from a mining explosion on the Tequor System. I only know this. Your daughter has the ability to cure an illness that can change the course of history, ma’am. This is severely important.” “So important you sacrificed your reputation with the IGEN,” Emma commented sassily, with a raised eyebrow. If she was anything like her daughter, Laida thought she could be quite a believable substitute for Melaina, if by personality and not by skill. “The IGEN is tremendously unwise. After all the evidence I provided from my daughter’s soothsaying coming true, they refuse to budge on their ‘all science, no superstitions’ rule, even when her predictions weren’t superstitions anymore. She once looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘Dad, a boy will be born today named Aaron Michaels’. I thought she was insane or screwing with me, so I dismissed her. The day after, out of curiosity, I checked if there was a boy named Aaron Michaels. Sure enough, an hour after Melaina told me, Aaron Michaels was born into this world. My daughter died with the knowledge of the disease she was slowly being killed by, and, yet, because no one believed her, she died anyway. She knew who could cure the bloody sickness! She knew where it came from! My daughter was more powerful than you can believe, Miss Emma, and so I beg of you, for your peace of mind and for mind: I need your daughter. I won’t keep her as a POW anymore, I won’t treat her like a pack mule, I just need her intelligence to keep this damn disease from killing anyone else.” Emma tilted her head. Laida could see the gears turning in her head, wondering what things she could hang over the Admiral’s head. From the way he was now, Laida knew he would do anything for the elder Tempest, anything, to get Aurora E. Tempest on his side. “Well …” Emma said. “We have quite a few … conditions, to discuss, but I do believe we have a deal, Monsieur Victor.” The Admiral smirked, before a confused expression flashed over his face. “Miss Emma, how do you expect to get Doctor Tempest on this damn station?” Emma ran her fingers through her exceptionally long blonde strands, twisting a particularly white one into a pretty spiral. “Believe me, Admiral. I will get you my daughter. You will have no issues in that regard.” Laida, suddenly and unexpectedly, very much pitied Aurora Tempest. *** Everything was quiet. She could hear the soft breathing of her companions, sleeping peacefully on the uncomfortable bunkbeds the Network had hurriedly stuffed into an overcrowded spaceship. She could feel the rumbling over the vehicle, purring delightedly underneath her feet. She could see the open three-dimensional places of nonexistence, with only silver and gold dotting the area like the little flashes of light they were. She was completely on her own, with even the ship’s computer taking a break, hovering them with no effort at all. She traced the edges of the interior like the bodice of a dress, casually thinking back to the dissection of frogs and cows she was forced to do in high school. Deus was a kind planet, with the babying of many students just to shove them out of education and into the working world. In almost any other galaxy, it was impossible to work with a Deus degree. It was simply not equivalent to the intelligence needed in say the Reya Galaxy, or the Milky Way. Deus was the butt of all the jokes—literally—for its furthest possible position from the sun of the Imperium Galaxy. Rory was not human—no one on Deus was—but, as a Diva, she had the capability of shifting her form into any being she desired. A girl she knew in primary merely cursed out the school system, changed, and went to live with a family of seagulls on Terra. Last thing Rory knew of her, she was laying her own eggs to another generation of strange Diva-seagull babies. (Could the babies change form still? As mainly a doctor of diagnosis and “making sure Patient is Alive and Healthy”, Rory did not know the specifics of Deus anatomy and reproduction individuality, but it was an interesting topic nonetheless.) Rory knew the natural form of a Diva—or the male form, Divo—was unappealing to outsiders. People of Deus were purple-skinned, with a crown of green spikes that Rory jokingly called hair, an affinity with cheap labor (Divas and Divos were workaholics; it was a genetic mutation, according to many Diva/Divo scientists, but Rory thought it was simply obsessive traditionalism, which sounded more logical), and molten gold irises. Some beings of Deus thought it was an insult to their ancestors to change form—even though it was a survival trait from their ancestors, but they decided to ignore that—and went their entire lives without morphing a single time. Some go entirely in a form that resembles animals of Deus or of other galaxies and planets. Most, however, just choose human. It required little to no exertion to keep this form with practice, and it caused the most benefits. If a human saw you as a purple Diva, they usually sweetened you up and tried to hire you for two units a pop. If a human saw you as human, they treated you as one of their own. It was a simple philosophy, but many species saw it as “lying” or “manipulation of other peoples”. It was an ongoing debate, and one Rory had no interest in pursuing. For her form, Rory picked one she sought: dirty blonde hair, like a gold coin that had been passed around too many times, pale skin, and her undeniable molten irises. The only thing that identifies a Diva as a Diva were her eyes; for a reason unknown to everyone, the Deus population could not change their eye color. They could make themselves fly, lay eggs, or even turn into a plant if they so much desired, but their irises always remained gold (and, with the plant debacle, if a Diva turned into a strand of grass, the grass would be gold instead of green; very unsubtle and illogical, so no one did it). Beings of Deus who choose to move to Earth simply provide themselves with colored eye contacts, more advanced from technological innovations. But, ones like Rory who have no longing to explore Terra for what it is, have to live with flaming gold eyes that shoved them back into the little Diva hole they emerged from. It was annoying but inevitable, so Rory did not try to avoid it. At the moment, Rory played the role of the insomniac of the ship. There was always one, no matter where you went in the galaxy; there was always one. Exactly one, too. Always destined for loneliness in the dead of night (or so their 24-hour clocks told them, as they were floating in the middle of space), with purple undereye bags and nightmares for days. Tonight, Rory was that person. Ever since Jace stopped speaking to her, she’d had flashbacks to their experiences together. From playing in the mud as children, to her being his Best Woman at his “human” wedding, to him saving her life as a POW and then ceasing to ever talk to his little sister again. She wanted to hate him, for leaving her like this, but she understood perfectly, which made it even more annoying. She kept going back to the nights in her cell, being thrown against a wall by their tormentor called Lewis, just begging her to die so he’d have someone to bury and perform his disgusting necrophily ways with. She assumed that was his reward after dragging information out of someone, which made the experience even more revolting. In her cell, she was never truly told what they wanted from her. Only hearing the whole “You’re the only one!” argument seven times over, and “You know! You just don’t know that you know!” and, her personal favorite, “I wish you were Melaina.” Rory hoped Lewis didn’t get that poor Melaina girl, or else she’d use her vomit as a weapon to help Lena escape. Rory heard many things in that damn cell, and none of them made any damn sense. She didn’t even know why she was there in the first place, only subject to Lewis’s repulsing character and words blurry from in between her misery. She missed Jace very, very terribly. He helped her escape from that dirty hell, and he’d been the only thing to aid her insomnia—which was a fancy way of saying her “avoidance of sleep”. If she slept, the memories would come. Or worse, the visions. So, she stayed awake for days on end, and eventually passed out from exhaustion, which granted her with a very nice, very calm, dreamless sleep. The system wasn’t broken, even if it was a tad bit screwed up, so she didn’t try to fix it. As a doctor, she’d gotten plenty of lectures of “You recommend seven hours of sleep and you barely sleep one, you hypocrite!” She was a doctor, but she was also an insomniac. If she could find a treatment to get seven hours of sleep, she would’ve taken it by now. Only Jace could help her get even an hour of sleep, and her brother hadn’t spoken to her in months. Rory was completely alone, and it extended farther than the damn suffocating space submarine. The IGEN—Intergalactic Exploration Network—had chosen Doctor Aurora E. Tempest for their latest mission. Why? She had no bloody clue. She’d just gotten back from wherever Hell was located and was unconcernedly working as a “checkup” doctor at a hospital in Deus; Rory was the only successful healer in Imperium history; she figured she’d work in Deus, for condolences’ sake. She was living on her own in the capital of a province, named Reum, when she’d gotten a startling holocall, offering a chance to travel to Lujiv, a planet in the Brendii Galaxy, as Chief Medical Officer. Rory had no previous experience in a spacecraft (other than transport to her university offworld and back), and certainly no experience with extreme cases of medical injury. The very reason she was not an ER doctor was for the brief moment between life and death—every moment she lost, a person was closer to death; every mistake she made, a person was closer to death. She didn’t think she would be able to operate under such conditions. Diagnosis was much more up her alley. She could identify diseases in up to one-hundred and seventy species, not including animals and flora and fauna. (Her memory was outlandish, which was her one true advantage when it came to studying at a human-established school of medicine.) Her only ability as a Chief Medical Officer would be her talent at diagnosis. She would need other beings to actually do the surgeries and procedures that Rory could not. A lot of pressure on her shoulders, if she said yes to the offer. Naturally, she said yes to the offer. Why? She had no bloody clue. As she got further and further down the line for this mission, the more anxious she felt. The task of the S.S. Minerva XI, a next installment in a lineage of age-old spaceships designed by the IGEN, was quite straightforward in theory. The IGEN would send off a group of individuals that would fly from its port on Nebula III to Lujiv to make negotiations with its queen, Lady Pensly. Her real name was too complicated for human mouths (and even experience mouths—snigger—like Rory’s, who was not human) to articulate, and so “Pensly” was the closest translation available. As Rory was just recently recruited and thrust into a position of power, she was the only one of the “senior” crew who did not know what a big deal Lady Pensly was. Rory had to read up about her on a borrowed holopad—genocide in the millions, execution of voyagers seeking out new galaxies, forbiddance of communication to organizations that would be able to assist the victims of these actions. In short, Lady Pensly ruled with a fist of hate, death, and poison, rather than just one of iron. She was sharper and deadlier than iron, that Lady Pensly. Rory was intimidated by the queen, and she knew she was not alone in that regard. However, in practice rather than theory, this mission was doomed to fail. The reason the IGEN even knew of Lady Pensly and her brutal reign was from a human survivor that knifed her in the stomach with a poisoned blade and then stole her royal ship—the quickest one in the galaxy. (This human was very stupid and very brave; the usual. His name was Tyling, and he has a planet named after him now.) It was very clear that Lady Pensly was only agreeing to allow the crew of the Minerva XI through to show an act of mercy. To prove to her subjects that she was a worthy queen, and she would listen to these inferior beings because she was nice like that. After everyone stopped laughing, Rory felt her stomach drop to her feet. There was no guarantee that the queen wouldn’t just cut off the power of the ship and let them all asphyxiate to death. Or line them up in front of her throne and slaughter them one by one. Or— Rory was freaking out. Lady Pensly could be everything, but she was not an easy person to trust. The Minerva XI’s Captain was brilliant. Her name was J. Kaiser, and she was dark-haired and too human for her own good. Captain Kaiser was determined and intelligent and kind, not condescending Rory for being as inexperienced as she was. After being on the same ship as her for seven months, and several pirate/rogue alien/giant metaphorical blob head attacks on the shuttle, Rory learned one thing: Kaiser knew how to get injured in the stupidest ways possible. She once dodged a phaser beam going right into her stomach by backflipping into the wall and tackling her harasser, but she got burns all over her back because she’d slipped and fell back-first onto the big metal oven in the kitchen. Raxolia, Kaiser’s Second, had laughed off her chair when that one was recorded into Kaiser’s medical files. Kaiser also did not like being called by her first name—Jamie—so everyone called her either simply “J.” or “Kaiser.” As Raxolia had put up with most of Kaiser’s shenanigans, Rax was the only one allowed to call her Jamie. Rory liked to distract herself with randomity when pulling an all-nighter. It kept her entertained, and less likely to pass out and dream. Rory thought the Captain understood her hatred of sleep better than anyone. On the days Rory passed out from fatigue, the Captain played the part of the non-sleeper. Rory wasn’t close enough to her to know why, but she overheard Raxolia chiding Kaiser about it, saying, “You have a very specific schedule of when you don’t want to sleep.” Rory wondered if the Captain had similar demons following her in her slumber. From the dry way her lips curl when someone mentions PTSD treatments and therapy, Rory guessed the affirmative. Rory spent that night staring out at the stars, tracing the walls and window lining to give herself something to do, and thinking. At one point, she yanked out a piece of paper, and started writing a weird experiment she wanted to try to discover new remedies for different illnesses (mainly for her own problems, because she knew she wasn’t the only one suffering them). She did not sleep. As usual, Raxolia was the first to awaken, with the epitome of elegance that she was. Lia was long-limbed and calm as she walked from the living quarters to the entertainment bay, where the replicators were stuffed with mediocre versions of the food from the kitchen (but useful when everyone was having a lazy day) and the ancient arcade machines were given from the IGEN in attempt at homeliness. A holovid was playing on the wall, showing a game of space quidditch. Raxolia silently padded over to the replicators, ordered a bad imitation of coffee which she loved (the rationality unbeknownst to Rory), and sat down at the counter. Raxolia sipped from her cup and waited patiently for Rory to speak. It’d become almost a ritual by now. Rory pondered, for a moment, if Raxolia got this way because of the Captain, but dismissed that train of thought for another time. Now was not the time to be distracted, not with the crew beginning to wake up. Another time. “Yes, Commander?” Rory asked, matching a constellation with the shape of her palm. Raxolia crossed her arms on the table. “How long has it been since you’ve slept?” Straight to the point. Kaiser loved her for that. Kaiser sometimes needed someone to kick her ass into gear. There was no one better to do that than Miss Raxolia Lyer. Rory twisted her mouth. “Four days.” No point in dancing around the subject if Raxolia all ready knew. “How long can you go without sleep?” As Rory opened her mouth to respond, Raxolia interrupted her. “Let me rephrase: How long can a Diva go without sleep?” Rory’s mouth snapped shut. She thought back to medical school, and her remarkable memory. She knew the answer, Raxolia knew she knew the answer, and they both knew that she didn’t like the answer. “An average Diva,” Rory said, just to irritate the Commander, “can go without four days of sleep for sanity’s sake. For survival, an average Diva can go ten days without sleep, before dying of exhaustion. An average Divo can go without five and ten respectively.” “Men are more sane without one more day of sleep?” asked Raxolia. “Yep. It’s a genetics thing. Divas are meant to work a lot, so their bodies need sleep. Divos are meant to be the brains and everything, and the brain needs to survive, so one more day of sanity. They both die after ten days straight without a wink of sleep. My professor emphasized that.” “Insane and dying,” Raxolia drawled out, an eyebrow raised. Rory ignored the hint. “A tragedy, really.” Raxolia sighed through her nose. “Aurora—” “Commander,” Rory disrupted, “I’d prefer you call me Rory. Or, if you so desire, Doctor. Aurora is not a name I respond to anymore.” “Fine. Doctor—” Rory rolled her eyes. “You understand the risk you are putting yourself in? You understand the tragic, insane death you have hanging over your head? Insomnia is curable, Doctor.” “Not the one I have.” Raxolia gave her a pitying look. “Then cure it.” “I’m trying, believe me. The last thing I want is to put this mission at risk, with how important it is. I have a new experiment in mind. I’m working as diligently as I can, Commander.” “You better be. Do you understand the example you set out for the crew?” The Second-in-command waved a hand in the direction of the living quarters. “A doctor who does not follow her own advice? An insomniac who works herself to death? Jamie has been trying to keep the attention off you, Doctor, but the way you are treating yourself, that isn’t going to last long.” “Why does the Captain care about me?” Rory blurted. “My job is to stay in the medical bay and bark orders. I’m not even qualified to do the surgeries I mandate! Why does Kaiser care what I do? Besides the whole ‘crew morale’ excuse you’ll spew at me. You’ve all been treating me differently since before the ship left Nebula III! If you wouldn’t mind, Commander, I’d like to know why such vital information is being kept from me.” Raxolia massaged her temples. “You were chosen, Rory.” She sounded tired, like an exasperated mother at her rebellious, ungrateful daughter. “What does that mean?” “The IGEN, the organization that commands all our asses, asked for you. Personally. That does not happen. The IGEN goes through a vigorous recruiting process. They go through thousands of applicants, thousands of people just begging to get a shot at the training system. Do you know how many people get into the Academy and never see an inch of space? You were a medical student who had no experience in the unknown and who didn’t even apply, and yet you were begged to join. Why? You were chosen for something, Aurora Tempest. The IGEN refuses to reveal to us what for. Is this not suspicious to you, Doctor?” Rory bit her lip, picking at the trim of her sweater’s sleeve. Quietly, she asked, “Why would the IGEN keep this from you?” She slowly rotated herself away from the view of the empty void and made eye contact with her senior Commander. Raxolia’s lips curled up at the edges. “The IGEN has many secrets. Including ones about your very existence and what makes you so special. Do you know what they want from you, Doctor? Any idea?” The blonde glanced down. “You’ve read my file.” “‘Taken as a POW’,” quoted the Second. “‘Tortured and immortalized, Doctor Tempest is an example that even under great adversity, humble souls can achieve their goals.’ Jamie made fun of the rhyme for a week before you were onboard.” Rory shook her head. “When I was taken … they wanted me. It seemed like they were bloody desperate to get some kind of information out of me, but they refused to say what this information was. I was halfway between delusions and reality the whole time, so …” Raxolia pressed her lips together. She growled in frustration, her dark eyes jumping between random points in the air like studying an invisible equation. She almost knocked her coffee cup off the counter. Sighing, she said, “I wish the Network realized keeping this from us is doing more harm than good. This could jeopardize the entire reason we’re out here! Diplomacy is something we have to strive for with Queen Pensly, and driving our crew insane does not help that cause.” “Does the Captain know?” Rory asked bluntly. “Know?” “Know why the IGEN ‘chose’ me.” Raxolia looked into her mug like it would start giving her sensible advice. Her fingers tightened on the tabletop. “No. Jamie doesn’t know. She can’t keep her mouth shut; the crew would’ve known before lunchtime.” Before Rory could interrogate Raxolia more, the second part of their ritual strolled into the room: Ana. Ana was an Angelus, with beautiful mockingbird wings and dark skin that made her appear like a goddess. Ana was also the most annoying person Rory had the displeasure of meeting. The Angelus believed herself to be the speaker of her people’s God, and only ever used this supposed ‘power’ to gain attention and force others to do her bidding. Rory despised her; Ana, however, was so self-absorbed, she thought everyone loved her as much as she loved herself. Rory had been wanting to scream at her since they’d met—with Ana refusing to take her hand because Divas were ‘dirty and stupid and not worthy of her attention’—but Captain Kaiser was their peacekeeper. Peace was their purpose, Kaiser would remind them. Peace was what they flew for, what they fought for, etc. Rory wished Kaiser were less kind, just for the sole target of punching Ana Aladonthy in the nostril. “G’morning!” greeted Ana, giving the Commander an appraising glance and the Medical Officer a dirty one. Raxolia said nothing, as aware of Ana’s personality flaws as Rory. Rory decided she would break their ‘a.m.’ rituals for the first time; she didn’t have the patience to deal with Ana’s insolence today. She stood from her crouched position, nodded at her superior, glared at her inferior, and left. The second she stepped out the door, the mission alert alarm started blaring in her ears. She, as well as the two women in the entertainment bay, bolted to her room and put on her mission-ready spacesuit. In record time, she was dressed and out of there, running to meet the Captain and the rest of the recruits at the teleportation dock. Kaiser was standing, leaning against a wall in her all-white ensemble and giving a very calm impression for someone who’d hit the ‘ASAP’ button. Kaiser smiled at her, before full-on grinning toothily at her Second, who’d materialized next to her. Rory narrowed her eyes at the two, but dismissed it. There was no rule against fraternization among colleagues, so Rory didn’t really care. If there were, well, she still wouldn’t really care. When everyone had arrived—the latest being Ana and her yes-woman, Bellona—Kaiser straightened her back and beamed at them. “From a very kind and unexpected act done by Queen Pensly,” the Captain said, “the Lady has sent private transportation to and from her planet from this very location. According to the stats, we should return before the next daybreak.” Murmurs filled the area. Raxolia did not look pleased, and Ana looked overjoyed. Neither of those reactions surprised Rory in very least. Carefully, the teleportation dock opened, revealing another, smaller spaceship awaiting their arrival. It was blood red, smooth and silicone in texture, with gold detailing on the wings. A man, tanned and blue-eyed, hailed them. He shook Kaiser’s hand and turned to inspect her crew. When his baby-blues landed on Rory, his expression flashed to one of hunger, before reverting to normal. Rory did not like this at all. This was too suspicious, too sudden, and too odd to be a coincidence. The man cleared his throat. “Crew of Minerva XI,” he announced, “Welcome to Viola, your ride to Lujiv. I am your guide, Admiral V. Burding, and I hope you will all have a wonderful time.” “We will,” Kaiser promised, before signaling her crew to follow their escort. Rory scrutinized the Admiral very carefully, eventually turning and joining her squadron. She resolved herself to think only happy predictions to their meeting with Lady Pensly. Absolutely nothing could go wrong. She was safe. She was safe.

Thoughts of an Extraterrestrial Insomniac, by alizaarches

Summary: An extraterrestrial insomniac has quite a special destiny.

Holy … I can’t even explain this one. I worked super, super hard to get this out on time. This work was very heavily inspired by Star Trek, so if there are a lot of similarities, that’s why. This was really fun to write, and the plot kinda came out of nowhere, but I freaking love sci-fi in general, so I hope I gave you all something relatively new to read!

I severely apologize if this offends you for whatever particular reason, that was not my intention.

[alizaarches]

September wondered how many people this eleven-year-old girl had executed, how many human beings that knelt before her, gagged and desperate, whose lives were dependent on the voices of imaginary friends, how many times she had sacrificed the hearts of men as if playing an arcade game. September almost pitied the girl, the Valkyrie. At eleven, September could remember the thrill of his rich aunt buying him the third PlayStation, his rich uncle buying him the newest Xbox, and the intense arguments with his cousins over which one was better. He’d grown into a PC pleb as of late last year, before he’d gotten involved with Los Angeles’s biggest crime boss, known as the Warfather. Some called him the Breeder—whether with his affiliation with abusing the loyalty of his wife or for his unhealthy obsession with creating chaos, September wasn’t sure. He could only the sharp pain that came with the loss of his mother, the sense of being completely alone in the world, with the only person he’d had gone and buried in a field of nameless tombstones, the fear of living life at college while knowing he had nothing to go home to, the hatred of the pitying looks whenever he didn’t go home for the holidays, someone asked why, and he said, “My mom’s dead.” They never asked of the rest of his family. He remembered glancing into alleyway at the dead of night (it helped him think, and his insomnia surpassed all desire to have a good night’s sleep), and seeing four men beating the ever-living crap out of a weaker, more defenseless fifth man. He wasn’t sure what came over him—maybe his insomnia had a whole “moral depravation” his therapist hadn’t told him about, or he’d already seen what horrors humans could do to other humans—but the next thing he knew, September jumped on the backs of two of the men, and dragged them backward. The beaten man seemed to notice his newfound chance of winning, and started fighting back with new vigor. September, of course, had no idea that in the process of saving a man’s life, he was, in fact, pissing off the biggest gangster in the state. The group of four men simply looked once at September, looking quite stupid with his pale fists at the ready to uncoordinatedly swing rapidly in circles, studying him in excruciating detail, and strolled away with a swagger that of a cat that got the cream (with one very melodramatic thug doing the “I’m watching you” two-fingered gesticulation). He didn’t understand why they’d given up so quickly, until he thought of the fact that they were simply memorizing his face like a witness for a police lineup to their chief in command. Over the next week, September continued living his life, unknowing that simply exploring through the empty streets in a quiet suburban place in LA would cause him to be freaking kidnapped. He’d been in his lonely apartment, tossing an innocent crouton-filled salad with his mother’s treasured dressing, when his doorbell rang. He frowned, wondering if it was the cute girl from B12, or the hippie from B11, or the bodybuilder from B6, or the hot guy from B17, or—his neighbors were his biggest source of entertainment in September’s secluded and boring existence. He’d plonked his tongs at his countertop, checked himself out in the mirror to fix his rabid dogear hair, and strode to the door. He tossed it open and found himself with a burlap sack over his head. He screamed with very manly pride and fought back, flinging his arms in every direction, before he was promptly picked up Cleopatra-style and thrown into the back of the car he imagined in his head. He theorized how utterly badass he would be if he pulled a Bond move and escaped from the rope restraints they tied around his wrists, beat his captors with a bag over his head (completely blind, like a less coordinated Daredevil), and steal their car with a smirk on his face. Clearly, since he was kneeling at the feet of a little girl, he did not pull through with his bizarre plan. His kidnappers yanked him to an upright position, dragged him to a random room, and kicked the back of his knees. September’s sight was released from captivity; the first thing he noticed was the building. Bright lights, forcing his eyes to squint and adjust from darkness, long concrete floors, smooth and untouched, paned windows blocked off by wood planks for only streaks of sunlight to peak through. The second thing he noticed were the people staring him directly in the face: a man, with light green irises and facial hair fit for a king, was sitting quite calmly in a foldup chair, his legs crossed in the epitome of elegancy; two faceless goons were standing on either side of the king, each with dark unevenly chopped hairstyles and black camouflage Kevlar vests; and, the weirdest addition to the group of otherwise adult men, a redheaded little girl, with a single ponytail running down her back. Protests filled his ears as September realized that, apparently, he was not the only one brought down to his knees. Other faceless goons dressed in the latest bulletproof fashion were casually bringing victims to the summoning circle like pigs for slaughter. One of the pigs dug his feet into the ground desperately, as if he could stop himself against the strength of yes-men, pleading to the skies for mercy. September liked to think he had more dignity than that, but when staring death in the face, he didn’t know what he’d do. The other sacrificial lamb was quiet, head hung low, with a brunette braid hanging down their shoulder—a woman, he assumed. The king’s lips curved, his ringed fingers pressed against his temple, his light irises shining in the reflection of the spotlights hanging above the altar where the ritual took place (in September’s overactive imagination, at least, but with the way he was stolen from his home like robbery gone wrong, it wasn’t so difficult to believe). Captain Green Eyes gestured with his right wrist, almost a hurried snap, and his assailants jumped at the chance of something deadly—Bandit One unsheathed a very intimidating-looking longsword, swinging it around him like a flagbearer, wiggling his eyebrows to his goony friend as if asking “Are you impressed by my lame lightsaber skills?” Bandit One—September decided to name him Lysimachus, for absolutely no reason—grinned, approached the screaming lamb, and swung downwards. Silence rang through the abandoned building as loud as a deadly song, cutting off a lifeforce that resisted till the very end of his life. The woman was released from her baggy hell, and the expression in her dark eyes was the combination of pure fear and righteous anger. Her braid swayed as she was forced forward into the circle of slaughter, directly in front of the goon king. He touched her chin, gently, like a father to his impatient, rebellious daughter. He chuckled a tad, opened his palm, waited for Bandit Dos noticed his prerequisite, watched the bandit reach behind his foldup throne and hand him something beautiful—a staff, golden in stature and longer than September’s flimsy arm, with a crown of thorns sharpened like nails and a base as twisted and knotted as a bird’s nest. Without a moment of hesitation, nor of regret, he smacked her right across her head, sprouting a spray of blood from the poor woman’s head, and a horrifying crack of a skull as she fell to the ground, motionless, soundless. She went down with her dignity, for better or for worse. The king tossed his staff, dismissing like it was not a thing to fuss about, and turned his light eyes to September. Without awaiting the order, the faceless goons grabbed his arms and dragged him to the alter. He bit his tongue to keep silent, not desiring the fates of either victim he’d witnessed. As he was dropped to his knees once more, he dropped his gaze to the floor. The last thing he wanted was to provoke to the beast, especially not after a fresh kill. The king touched his chin just as gently as the woman before him, and raised his head to lock their eyes. The king smiled, caressed his cheek, and kicked him the chest. September grunted from pain, gravity attempting to lurch him backward, with the assailants holding him up. Before September regained his senses, the king spoke, soft and deep, like a calm baritone: “Valentine.” The reaction was immediate—the faceless scruffy-haired goons packed up their pride and marched out of the room, carrying the bloodied bodies of the casualties, laughter following them as they leave, as if they’d taken sickening enjoyment to humans used as sacrificial pigs. The long metal door shut with a loud clang, ringing through September’s ears like a memory he wanted to forget. The redheaded little girl stepped forward bravely, akin to a cartoon animation, her ponytail accidentally smacking her in the face, causing her nose to crinkle. She seemed innocent enough, this Valentine, similar to a child and less like an heir to a gangster empire. Valentine did an imitation of a salute, from the inaccuracy of which she performed it. “Ready, sir!” she addressed, squeakily. Ready? The king patted her shoulder and gestured toward September. Valentine approached him, childish and, dare he say it, normal. She wore a fluffy, bright yellow coat, with a white shirt with the beta symbol, her red hair ponytail swishing as she walked forward. She knelt in front of him, her small pale hands pressing against his face. She smiled, sadly, before backing away. She reached into her pocket, and displayed the objects in her hand: berries, smoother than raspberries, slightly smaller, too. She touched her fingertips to his forehead, and whispered, “As I take my last breath, I call for the mightiest of miracles.” Before September could even begin to react, Valentine shoved the berries into her mouth and bit down, wincing as if the sensation was painful to her. She gasped, staggered farther away until she stood next to the Warfather. Her eyes glazed over, shining gold, and she fell—ungracefully, as if she’d been pushed. September jolted forward, finally realizing that no one was holding him back. The king gave him a warning look, and glanced back at Valentine. September thought back to the faceless goons, to the merciless extent they would follow their leader, and decided it was wiser to obey, rather than leave; one way would provide him a slightly more painful death. As if nothing were wrong, the redheaded girl stood back onto her feet, her hand covered in the bitten berries, her ponytail tilting too far to the right, her irises the color of blood. September cursed out loud, which made the king laugh, his pupils twinkling, as if this were a typical Saturday night. For a brief moment, September wondered who Valentine was to the king—his daughter? His surrogate child who he gets to perform possession rituals to people who slightly pissed him off? Valentine strolled toward him, as calm as a possessed little girl could be, and giggled delicately, which threw him off quite a bit, because a kid with red eyes who giggled at his misery was very disconcerting. She lowered herself to his height and brushed his dark hair from his ear, humming a song which was unfamiliar to him. She glanced down at herself, pulled on a chain he hadn’t noticed from afar, and ripped off an amulet: a simple silver boxed cord with an onyx pendant enlaced with a gray bail. Valentine tied it around his neck, tracing the gem with a tenderness he didn’t know a child influenced by the Warfather could have. Her eyes darkened to the color of wine, and she spoke, much shadier than the cheerful girl from before, “The goddess speaks to me  …” Her lips moved slowly, slurred, as if drunk and blissful in knowing so. “She wonders …” Valentine traced the collar of his jacket. “She wonders what to do with you.” The girl glanced up through her lashes, leaning in closer to him, like an intimidation tactic. She petted the top of his head as if talking to a child, from a fellow child. “Shall she tell me to decapitate you, like Elias? Shall she tell me to literally staff you, like Allegra? Or shall she create a much more deadly, messy, imaginative murder for you?” “Who are you, Valentine?” September asked, incredulous. It was one thing to piss off a crime boss, the most threatening and fiery crime boss in the city, it was another to be on the receiving end of a possessed little girl. The easy, leisurely way her smile spread across her face reminded September of the killers in horror films—the deadly, toothy grin that reflected a dark past, vicious memories, and most likely a tragic backstory. Her canines were coated in scarlet, the child that Valentine was shining through, like a little girl being told not to talk while speaking, and did so in utter spite. She poked him in the nose with an unsaid “boop!” and answered him: “I,” she paused for dramatic effect, “am a Valkyrie. I decide who lives and who dies. The goddess chose me.” She seemed amused by September’s expression, which he was sure she understood loud and clear: the questions surrounding her sanity, the Warfather’s sanity, and his own sanity. She tilted her head, her eyebrow furrowing, as if she were listening to something very far away. Her blood-red eyes cleared, a sharpened focus appearing that wasn’t there before. The amulet around September’s neck warmed, like a phone that had been used for too long. Valentine reached to her necklace and showed the pendant to him; the gem had turned the color of rose petals. “The goddess has decided.” The king’s face brightened significantly, resembling more of an adolescent than Valentine. His fingers twitched as if he were wishing he hadn’t thrown away his staff of murder. “‘The goddess has decided,’” he agreed. “What doth thou has’t to sayeth?” Valentine sighed. She took a glance at September, and seemed to remember it was her charm around his neck. She carefully untied it from his collar and replaced it around her own, likely to keep it handy for other murder-judgment rituals. “‘Mercy’,” she said. “The goddess calls for mercy.” “‘Mercy’?” September asked excitedly. He began to wriggle in his rope restraints. “So, I can leave? I can pretend this was all a terrible dream and I’m not looking at a crime boss and his possessed daughter in the eyes?” The king gave him a very, very dry look that read: Even if The Goddess (with capitals and everything) commanded it, I wouldn’t let you go. A very reassuring expression. Much more reassuring than the one Valentine was shoving in his direction—a pitiful countenance, one with a raised eyebrow, a half smile, and snorting nose. Valentine shook her head in response to his enthusiastic questions. “No,” she said, feeling around the red onyx pendant like it was a good luck charm. “The goddess does not desire a merciful life for you, Mister September Bell. The goddess wishes a merciful death.” The king looked thoughtful. He nodded, as if mentally agreeing with the terms the goddess placed upon him. He reached behind himself, delicately unsheathing a beautiful gun from his back pocket. It was a revolver, golden in its barrel and grip (the Warfather really liked gold, apparently), with loving detail etched across its entire frame, Jellinge style carving engraved into the metal: fond depictions of interlocking knots and elegant symmetrical two-dimensional animals. It was a stunning firearm; September almost didn’t mind dying to it. As it was, a goddess from a religion he didn’t believe in had ordered a little girl and a kingpin to kill him “mercifully.” So yes, he did, in fact, mind dying to the lovely revolver. The Warfather offered the gun to his daughter. “Would you like to do the honors, Miss All-Powerful Valkyrie?” Small, sad brown eyes peeked out for a moment, as if the child underneath the Valkyrie persona was peering through, regretful and unable to do anything about it. A second later, ruby irises returned to their normal, lethal state, establishing the goddess’s attendant once more. Valentine smirked, twisted her fingertips into her long, red ponytail, and nodded innocently, like she was agreeing to a walk around the park and not first-degree murder. “I would be honored.” She bowed, as graceful as a ballerina, and skipped over to her father, snatched the revolver, and strolled back over to the very last sacrificial lamb. She casually unclasped the safety, like she’d gotten used to her life and was unfazed by it. She pointed the sublime gun at September’s forehead. He took a shaky breath, and closed his eyelids. From afar, he heard Valentine speak for the last time: “Any last words?” “You can take your goddess and your disturbing little rituals and shove it up your—” A gunshot rang through the deserted warehouse, and September Bell fell to the floor.

Mercy, by alizaarches

Summary: A man set for dead by a mob boss finds himself relying on the faith of an eleven-year-old girl.

Oh. My. God. This story took SO LONG to write. I continuously got stuck, continuously got writer’s block. You have no idea. Geez. Anyway. Yeah. I have a lot of inspirations for this one, just leading up to this. Some of the heavy influences include: Norse Mythology, BTR (yes, the band), Overwatch, the phrase “child of peace,” and the song The Ride of the Valkyries by Domine (English version).

Originally, this was meant to be the first non-fantasy story I’d written, with a normal crime boss and a normal little girl with a teddy bear. The little girl was originally meant to have something similar to flipping a coin that would help her decide who lives and who dies. Valentine was heavily inspired by the valkyries of Norse Mythology who choose who may go Valhalla or not. Of course, she was also inspired by the whole “scary little girl” trope a lot of people do.

Anyway, this story was a lot of fun to write, despite my eternal frustrations with it. I hope you enjoyed it!

[alizaarches]

Growing up, Gin had heard the tales of the dragons of old—how creatures with teeth sharpened like razors and the size of small garbage trucks hunted the land with a vengeance unparalleled to anything seen before. Monsters the length of Shanghai Tower roaming with enough passion to fill the books of Gin’s ancestors. Gin was taught by her grandfather to never trust a dragon. Originally, she’d believed the statement to be a metaphor, in the same way humans were called rats and snakes, but no; he’d meant actual, literal dragons. The beginning of Gin’s bizarre existence took place in a small town in Japan, a long time ago. Her mother gently stroked Gin’s hair as she sang the stories of faraway lands and legendary princesses, while her father handed her a katana and whispered a blessing of good fortune in three dead languages. Her grandfather, full of grief from losing his wife, smiled sadly at her, telling her how much she looked like her namesake, how exactly is the perfect way to sharpen her sword (which was more helpful than the solemn silence of her father), and how to perform a three-fingered gesticulation that wards off dragons. Gin shook her head to get rid of those thoughts, and promptly slammed into a telephone pole. She cried out, gripping her forehead, glancing up from her romance novel, glaring at the pole like it had attacked her. She huffed, put The Ace of Hearts into her bag, and slung it over her shoulder. She walked around the post and continued strolling down the sidewalk with her head held up high. Joking around, she started dancing dorkily to the music in her earbuds, twisting her feet together and falling on her face. She laughed, rolling her eyes at herself, and twisting onto her side to push herself back up. Instead of pulling off the epidemy of grace she so obviously was, she turned her head and made eye contact with huge, bright yellow irises. She screamed, scrambling away from the storm drain, staring in absolute horror. Black pupils in the center of lightbulb eyelets observed her, looking Gin up and down as if calculating the potentiality of a threat, and ducked beneath the grate once more. Gin sat on her hip, panting like she’d freshly run a marathon, and wondered if she’d read too much fantasy. She looked down at her palms, steadying herself, and stood. She picked up her backpack from where she’d dropped it, glanced back at the home of the giant egg yolks, and kept on marching. She plugged back in her songs of the wild and went back to dreamland. Gin wished she could dive back into her card game book—she was just getting to the part where the professional gambler throws a match of poker for the woman he loves—but the road home required many roadway intersection, and she’d rather not get run over by moderately quick vehicles. She stuffed her hands into her jacket pockets and attempted to avoid any ponderings of her grandfather, which of course meant she could only think of him. Her mind was filled with the fondness in his voice when he spoke of shenanigans he ensued when he was younger (including a swordfight with Grandmother’s brother, an attempted burglary of his motorbike, and a bratwurst Japanese nun party); the smile on his face when he flipped through old scrapbooks of past memories with him and his deceased spouse; the crinkles of the corners of his eyes when he retells the childhood of his eldest daughter, Gin’s mother. Gin missed her grandfather so much. She looked down at the concrete: one foot in front of the other—left, right, left, right. Watch the breaks in the sidewalk, follow the straight line. She stopped dead. She shut her eyes, a tear crawling passed her willpower. In her heart—her Ace of Hearts (okay, she’ll stop now)—she knew her grandpa was happy, satisfied; he’d missed his Gin (the original one) more than anything, even more than non-crooked legs and the adventure of youth. Gin the Second knew he was content in being buried next to the love of his life. But sometimes she’d catch her mom look at her wedding photo—the two most important men in her life on either side, all smiling like idiots—and fiddle with her Years of Life bracelet: silver, like Gin’s name. Gin knew she wasn’t the only one who missed Grandpappy Kei, but from how her family avoided his death like a forest fire, sometimes it felt that way. She sighed shakily. Crying wasn’t going to bring him back, and she’d had plenty of time to grieve. Her dark eyes hardened, and she, determined, thought, “I am stronger than his. Grandfather taught me better than this.” She forced her legs to move in the familiar path to her cottage through the square. She brushed her fingertips against passing mailboxes and store windows to get a better grip on reality. She reached a fork in the road—she could either go the longer, more wiry direction with heavier traffic and more people that could notice a tearstain and report it to her parents like the police, OR she could go through the peaceful, small patch of woods that could’ve housed Grandmother’s house. She chose the compact cluster of trees, thank you very much. Gin lowered the volume of her music just in case. She carefully breathed in the fresh air, a patch of non-toxified air in a town full of air pollution and quite a lot of gasoline. She raised her arm and touched the hanging trees of maple, beautiful in the weather of this time of year, blending in with the orchards of cherry blossoms and magnolias. The ground was invisible, covered in colorful fallen leaves. She adjusted the pack on her back and wondered that if she ran away from Casa de Mori, how long would she survive in this part of the woods? How long would it take before the authorities found her? Before anyone found her? To her right, a branch cracked. She froze. With the caution of prey to an unknowing hunter, she turned her head, slowly. For the second time that day, she found herself staring into eyes the color of the smiling yellow sun she’d used to draw in the corner of prepubescent illustrations. The creature glowered back, fearlessly, and raised its head in a show of dominance—a challenge. Gin broke eye contact in response. Instead, she stretched her neck to examine its body; she wasn’t sure what she was expecting. An owl the size of her bedroom? (No, its body was long, and lean, and it lacked the bodily feathers.) A Bombay cat? (The likeliest possibility, and even that was a stretch. A domestic animal prowling like its untamed counterpart in the woods? It also didn’t help that a Bombay cat could not possibly be the length of a pickup truck.) Gin moved her scrutiny further down its figure—a scaly, muscular spine with white spikes popping out like shark’s teeth; a tail, swinging, a weapon curling gracefully like the smooth agility of a feline; a form so dark it blended in with the shadows of maple trees (noticeable by the black spot on the otherwise very pinkish reddish earth); legs the height of the pole Gin had run into; and wings the size of a man’s parachute, as leathery and inky as the raisins of her homeland, relaxed in the way the calm before a storm was relaxed—an uneasy stillness before the ball will drop. The beast took a careful step into the light—a very minute spot uncovered by the canopy of branches overhead. Gin’s eyes widened. It was—predictable, because her life was as ironic as the soap operas her mother loved to watch, minus the secret incest and bastard children from illegitimate sibling/spouse/parent/person—a dragon, matching the pictures from Grandmother Gin’s tomes of folklore perfectly. Its razorlike teeth was covered by an unintimidating close-lipped smile, and its lightbulb irises closed as it bent its head over in a show of docility, seeming to only want peace with the human girl with clumsy tendencies and long, dark hair. Beware of the legends her grandfather drilled into her naïve little-girl brain of malicious dragons, Gin gulped. She tightened her grip on her backpack straps, and walked forward, as softly and as docile as the dragon itself. Dragging her feet on the ground, she could only hear the dragon’s breathing, the sole sound in a silent forest. She reached up, a pale arm outstretching in a gesture of trust. Inwardly, she was screaming at herself—a single signal of ceasefire from an intelligent monster (who could be tricking her into becoming willing prey, casually strolling into her own death) and she was going to possibly very eagerly sacrifice her own limb? Too late now. “Hi,” said Gin. “Please don’t kill me.” The dragon opened one eye and glanced at her like it was questioning her intellect. If it had eyebrows, it would’ve totally raised it at her with enough sass one could convey with an eyebrow. Her hand touched its jaw, gentle, apprehensive. It leaned into her touch. A glare of light reflected into Gin’s iris, making her startle. She frowned, before ducking her head slightly. A collar was wrapped tightly around the dragon’s neck, with a silver nameplate engraved with affection: ASA. “Asa,” Gin whispered. “Like the flower? The Morning Glory—Asagao?” The dragon—now known as Asa, a feminine name, so Gin assumed the dragon was female—shook her head. Gin wondered what Asa stood for, but dismissed it, blaming her deadly curiosity. She’d never been able to resist a good mystery, and typically drove herself insane while trying to solve the enigma. She stroked Asa’s scales like she was petting a puppy. In comfort, the dragon yawned, showing off her long, triangular white-gold fangs. Gin’s heart climbed into her throat—her grandfather. The thousands of times he’d spent his life describing to Gin every menacing detail of a dragon’s claws, of the wide, intelligent catlike eyes, of the teeth sharpened like razors, ready to bite anything and everything in half, taking pleasure in doing so. Asa sensed her discomfort, and nudged her, purring. Gin could only mindlessly caress her backarmor, flashing back to happier times, where her family wasn’t grieving, and her life wasn’t a series of ones and zeroes—coded, replaceable, and predictable. “Where did you come from?” Gin forced herself to ask, swallowing back the urge to start running. Scurrying away from a dragon like a frightened deer would not solve anything, especially with a creature that could chew her up and spit her out. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?—If a girl screams in a forest and there’s no one around to hear it, does she still die? Asa nuzzled her hand for her attention, and answered her question, glancing up to the sky with lightbulb irises. Gin nodded. “I should’ve guessed. Can you imagine Sensei Mei’s face if a dragon strolled into the Plaza? Walked straight into the Ki’s without a single—er, roar? Do you guys roar?” Gin got chatty when she was nervous. It was a Mori thing. Asa blinked slowly at her, one eye at a time. Asa turned her massive body around in a circle and sat down like a dog, her fat legs stretching out as a pillow for her resting head. A dragon trusted her—why? How did the monster know Gin wouldn’t be cruel to her? Wouldn’t hook her nameplate and sell it to the nearest shady buyer? Wouldn’t survive if Asa attacked her, and throw her backpack as a distraction, run back to the Plaza and scream for the Dragon Hunter crew? Gin smiled a little, ironically. The Dragon Hunters were a story her grandfather used to tell her—ethereal warriors made specially to protect the world from dragonkind. Along with the stories of Clarity’s Lover; The Killer, Master, Brother; and What One Gives (the written tales of a woman falling in love as a girl, growing up, and returning “home” to discover her former lover was blinded by the one he trusted most; that of a man who’s only solace in life is his sister, does whatever it takes to save her from herself, including murder and training someone to do his bidding; and that of a guardian angel who falls for a human—figuratively—and gives everything for him, only for him to point a weapon her in face. There are different versions, the American movie version says a gun, the traditional version says a Kama, the odd remake from Spain just claims he strangles her with his garrote wire—and kill her), the Dragon Hunters was a legend, a story told down through generations. Gin really wasn’t sure why those myths were the details she thought of as she contemplated why she’d earned a dragon’s trust, but she was told before she could never truly focus on one thing, always having a wandering mind. With Asa sitting directly in front of her, as innocent as a puppy and as intelligent as an owl, it probably wasn’t a death wish to drift off into dreamland again. Gin knelt. She stroked the head of a dragon. “Hi,” she said. “Sorry. I zoned out, right? My family calls it my ‘dreamland look’. They say I daydream for longer than normal person does, usually at ten minutes a time. I don’t ever realize I’m doing it. I just think, and apparently that’s weird.” She sighed, shaking her head. “You don’t care, do you?” She grinned self-deprecatingly. Gin had a realization. “Huh. I never told you my name.” For some reason, Asa perked up at that. “Yeah? You want to know my name?” For the first time, Asa the Dragon looked shy. She nodded, reluctantly. “Okay.” Gin pet her. “Well, my name is Mori Gin, I’m a Sagittarius, and I like hot chocolate.” Asa glanced up. Her eyes, yellow as a Tokyo Banana, looked almost human, if without a natural coloring. Abruptly, and very, very unexpected, a voice popped into her head, as clear as the music in her headphones: “I am Asa, and I am a Virgo.” Gin stared, shocked. “Did you just—?” Gin asked the dragon. “Did you just TALK TO ME?” Reasonably, she was freaking out, if more mentally than physically. Because, as everyone is aware, dragons cannot talk. “Or am I going insane?” which was another option. “You are not going insane,” said Asa, gruff and fiery, which was what a dragon’s voice apparently sounded like. “You told me who you are.” “I … I told you my name!” “It qualifies.” “‘Qualifies’!” “Yes. My former handlers … well, they manipulated my neural programming so I can only speak when someone introduces themselves to me. And for being what I am… . My handlers wanted me under a leash, to say the least.” Gin’s stomach dropped. “Asa, what is your name short for?” Asa looked down at her claws. “Asashin.” “‘Assassin’. Your name is ‘Assassin’.” “Yes. My handlers were not kind people. They intended to make me into a monster. You know what that feels like, I think.” Gin’s jaw clenched. “I have many questions. Who are your handlers? Why do they want to make you into an assassin? Why are you here? Where did you come from? What do you want from me?” “I do not want anything from you.” With a single thought to the grandfather that taught her everything she knew, she spoke a prayer, apologizing, for she knew he was all but throwing a riot in his double gravestone, Gin made a decision she knew she’d either completely regret, or thank herself forever for doing so. “Can I ask a favor?” “That depends on the favor, Miss Mori.” Gin smiled. (I’m sorry, Grandfather.) “I want to fly.”

The Dragon Rider, by alizaarches

Hello everyone. Guess who’s back, back, back! Back again! Anyway, I decided to try to write my first sequel. This is the sequel to The Dragon Hunter, with Naomi. This time we follow a girl named Gin, and she just wants to fly (because the word “ride” has been ruined for me).

Again, I just want to stress I do not want to be offensive. This is only briefly based on Japanese culture. This one takes place in Japan, but I sincerely do not mean offense. I simply wanted to write some fun fantasy, with weird relatable protagonist and a puppylike pet dragon.

Asa was inspired by the dragons Aithusa (Merlin, the TV Show), Toothless (How to Train Your Dragon), and Bombay cats. You could probably tell the similarities. I also made somewhat subtle and also non-subtle references to fandoms. I’ll let you guess which ones.

[alizaarches]

The battle ran in slow motion. Dozens and dozens of her crew were flung from the ramparts, slain by the sword of tyranny, or captured to be used as toys of pleasure. Cannons fired, tainting the beautiful craftsmanship of her Victory’s kempaswood deck, long pinewood railings and masts, steel rudders and cannons, and mahogany steering wheel. Fires were put out with saltwater, the bullets of a bayonet rifle were retaliated with cannonballs and the swinging of ropes upon the enemy ship. Many of her men bore the insignia of the Victory, and the countries for which they had come; on their heads, they wore tricorns, wraps of white rough cloth, bandanas, or animal masks. Tattoos (of wolves, of the faces of a beautiful women, of the date when the Victory set sail) were merciless as triceps were flexed and brutally pushed into the faces of the rival crew. Scars were earned, bloodied knuckles were winded, the loyalty of her men faultless as many of them refused to serve another Captain, refused to give any kind of inclination of their future whereabouts, refused to reveal any true identities of friends on the Victory. Riggings were cut, the hull was covered in splashes of black and pale blue, the water inked with red as strongly as the flag hanging from the ship’s main mast. Rounds of silver were exchanged between the too-close distance the two ships—the Victory and the North—as her brother in the Crow’s Nest called down orders that included the pirate code, a promise for freedom once returned to land-ho, and that their deaths would be honored if the Victory needed their sacrifice. Captain Maya Moon watched this all with a spyglass and her cutlass. She fought bravely, parrying foes away from injured crewmen and keeping guard on the only entrance to their hoard of gold and silver below deck. She felt the hull rattle underneath her feet, felt the familiar movement of waves as her vessel bobbed with the sea, felt the souls of her crew being slaughtered without mercy and being continuously martyred for the sake of their Captain and ship—for everything they stood for and left behind to serve her. She jammed the lock with a broken plank torn from the quarterdeck, remaining from a gunshot battle between her First Mate and the North’s. Only those with considerable strength—and Maya, who was the one who knew the secret entrance to the massive storage of their piracy—could make it below deck without much difficulty. Her brother, Axel, observed from above, reporting the weaknesses of the opponent ship for the cannon bearers and the places where her crew was kept hostage. It was a constant juggle for superiority and struggle between Maya and the North’s Captain, with bodies sprawled across the floor of both decks that was meant to be of their best and their greatest. Maya commanded the lasting stragglers with little worry. It didn’t matter if her ship—and, perhaps, her company—sank, if it kept the North from gaining another pile of gold she and her men had worked so hard to get. The North was known for its cruelty and disregard for other workings of the sea, known for its size and charm. The Victory was subtler, commanded by the bastard daughter of its predecessor, known for its cleverness and silver tongue. If Maya were to live through this battle, or die, she would keep her earnings to herself and those who deserve it—not to the bullies of the ocean that got everything through muscle and insolence. She traded looks with her brother. He agreed. She drove her own ship to the ground, and she could not care less. She offered forgiveness to her crew-mates if they chose to swap to the enemy side—some did, with nods of eternal respect and shared tragedy. Some, however, denied—they were as willing to die for her ship as she was. They nodded, determination flashing in their eyes, not an inch of fear anywhere. She waved at the North, smiled at its Captain and the men who would live, and, finally, saluted. She shouted, For the Victory! and her ever-so-loyal crew responded in kind—even those who had switched over to the rival craft. She gave her final order as Captain: to fire in on themselves. The cannons were turned inward, to the bottom of the biggest vulnerability of her vessel. Tears began filling her eyes; she couldn’t have asked for a more loyal team, a more loving family on the sea, where they’d sung sea chanteys and exchanged stories of wives, husbands, children, and siblings from the homes in which they came. She’d miss it. The floor beneath her dropped, and she gave one final yell to her family, an apology to her brother above her, and a prayer of mercy. The Victory sank between the waves, the North crying out in outrage at the realization at what they’d done. Maya Moon fell into the waves, her dark hair flowing behind her, and closed her eyes. In the distance, a song began to play. Figures of glimmering scales and graceful movements appeared deep beneath the water. Locks of unnatural colors were matched by the swimming of their beautiful tails of liquid metal. Creatures of the Deep began gathering around the drowning pirates. One with liquid gold for hair and tail grasped Axel Moon in her arms, kissing him with an open mouth and dragging him lower into the waves. One with liquid cobalt hair and liquid nickel scales clutched the Victory’s First Mate and pulled him closer in her arms and followed her sisters. One, their leader, studied the battlefield of bodies and people that needed saving, and picked a pirate with brown hair and a tricorn floating behind her—Maya Moon. The leader, with liquid uranium tresses and liquid bismuth plates, kissed the Victory’s former Captain, and smiled. The leader grasped her hand, like a friend leading another down an unfamiliar street, and yanked her, playfully, deeper below the sea. The crew of the Victory, including its Captain, First Mate, and Crow, were never found, nor was the millions of currencies worth of gold coins and silver ingots sunk in the tragic battle between two enemy ships. Survivors on the North expressed respect and admiration for the Victory’s men and women—their swordsmanship, their bravery, their loyalty, their Captain. The Victory’s company was forgotten, unknown to the rest of the world to be living freely beneath the sea’s surface, as creatures known as mermaids.

The Victory, by alizaarches

No prompt this time! Only a craving to write about pirates and mermaids, at the same time! I love bloody pirates, okay?

[alizaarches]

(In the beginning, all was quiet.) Throughout the land the people knew so well, there had been music—lunes, and Germanics, and Romdows, all danced with a kind of grace unbeknownst to its enemies, swords gliding through the air, feet cloaked with sage leaves and twisting pelts of yellow magick. Hair flung around in long twists of plaits brushing the bow at smalls of people’s backs, tanned hands offering to those of silky skin, light eyes gleaming with the lights and the natural color of gravel. Divine songs played by the magician-musician combination abominations echoed through great halls, dainty ears, and souls of the people of Vronnock. They danced throughout the night, singing to the gold skies with passion only known to those with charms to possess—the Night of Freedom, the Night of Two-Thousand Melodies, the Night of Victory. The celebration often lasted for longer than the townspeople were prepared for, another date added for the number of years they receive their liberty—this day marked the seventeenth, and so seventeen days were reveled. Children were dressed in eternal-dresses, youth-ballgowns, eternal-cufflinks, and youth-rhubarbboots, the silver hair that identified the adolescence from the adults running amok and altogether causing chaos their families would beg to rebuild. The purplebrown hair of the elders shook disapprovingly as they, for once a year, lied down their principles and drank till the night was over—kneading lifethreads and interweaving tendrils of hex and charm through the heavens as if waving a white flag in surrender. All one could hear for kilometers around was the sound of laughter, the tinkling of bells, and the pitter-patter of shoes of gray blood and minors’ play. The skies above Vronnock were inflamed with magick, faith, and hope for a future untouched by tyranny and injustice. Oh, how the people sang. The Goddess grew tired of watching such things. Originally, when she’d planned to give the people an authoritarian for a leader, she had meant nothing wrong of it—to put it in simplistic terms, millennia was tiring: thousands of years of watching the same things over and over again grew tedious very, very quickly (which was to her the equivalent of hundreds of magickal and humane lives united). She’d given them the Frey, which was the first interesting to happen since Vronnock began—he provided them a list of nonrights for them to follow, which included insulting him and his reign, eating vegetable pizza, and performing any form of witchcraft or wizardry. Being a freely magickal country, Vronnock and the other towns of the outer ring of the Frey’s sovereignty were furious, simultaneously agreeing this man would not be their ruler, for his laws were unwarranted and idiotic, and every townsperson in their damn continent banded together as a secret society to overthrow their ever-so-lovely Frey. The country sacrificed much for change—mothers and children were slaughtered, houses were burned to the ground, entire temples and forget-me-nots brought to the brink of extinction from hate crimes (by the Frey himself) and nonfaith. People were taken as slaves (of work and of sexual nature), stripped of their civil liberties as magickal and humane persons, shamed until their cheeks were sore and mocked by the (loosely) human who was meant to bring them safety, not renegades. For many years, the people fought bravely against the Frey, refusing to accept his offers of mercy in exchange for betrayal of their families, home, and privileges, and suffering slits of bloodied whips and tears behind determined eyes for something as small as their country’s future. The Goddess admired their loyalty—her Father and Mother wouldn’t have given so much for a copper coin, let alone the spawn they created. After decades of less-than-war and more-than-rebellion, the Frey was calmly sitting in his throne, a crown of silvers (shaped more or less so of tiny knives sticking to his forehead) upon his head, his back straight and proud, eyes cold and as dirtied white as the hair on his youngest servant’s head. There were the sounds of breaking glass, waving pitchforks, and yelling of impartiality beginning to move into his castle like an invasion of ants. His advisors were scurrying around him, attempting to reason with the man that’s done so much harm to the people he was meant to protect, explaining to him the situation at hand: his wife and legitimate child were all ready set on the quickest carriage to the place he had come, and the rebels had broken into the fortress with the ease of practice and planning—they thought the first bit of information was more important; they were wrong. The Frey, with the tranquility of a man on the edge of insanity, told them to leave him—the rebels were coming, and he understood his last moments would only be stretched and more painful had he turned to run. A fence of his best soldiers were positioned in a semicircle around him; each of them dropping to the ground with the sound of cheers and the SHRINK of a blade. His final stand was on his throne—where he belonged—with a crown of silvers upon his head, gazing upon the subjects who were meant to kneel at his command, to never question the decisions their overlord had brought to them. The leader of the uprising that was never meant to make it passed its first phase, the bastard of the Frey, looked him in the youth-gray eyes, and slayed him down, without a single word of forgiveness or a single chance at mercy. The Frey was dead. This was seventeen years ago. Many of the Frey’s loyalists were cast out or begged for acceptance to the country they betrayed. The Frey’s wife and legitimacy were gone, to have never be seen near the town’s high buildings and golden skylines ever again. The Frey’s bastard took up the mantle as the new royal monarch; some of the townspeople had quite a problem with this—a bastard ruling over everyone? What shame they felt! However, the bastard—called the Newfrey (innovative, he claimed jokingly)—challenged the people: if they had any issue with the new ruler, they were welcome to find someone better, to find someone willing to bend to their will in the perfection they desired. The people grew silent, appreciative for their new sovereign and his banishing of the laws of old, the laws his father put into the system and that he was now expelling. The Newfrey was known for his kindness, the complete opposite of his predecessor; the prisoners were set free, the townspeople were listened to, and the crown of silvers was buried with its owner. However, the Newfrey’s reign was not always filled with order and integrity. The Newfrey’s mother—a prostitute from a night of passion with the Frey, weeks after his wedding night—attempted to claim the throne for herself; with the sovereign out of the way, there was truly no one to keep her from doing so except her illegitimate son. The Newfrey aimed to give her mercy, to give her a life away from the one she was living, with riches and freedom, but she dismissed him—she demanded he hand over his authority to its rightful proprietor, and she left him no choice; he was forced to have his guards escort her from the palace, and to never return unless it was an offer of peace and familiarity. She never returned. The people adored their Newfrey, admired him for the picture he exhibited and the mercy he gave. He was a significant and cherished change from his father, and, being the leader of the past insurgence, understood what exactly the people desired from their lord and savior, their sovereign. The Newfrey was still called the bastard—particularly the Frey’s bastard—and was still cursed from a million meters to Sunday, but no one denied this simple fact: he was better than the Frey. He gave the people seventeen years of peace rather than a list of seventeen nonrights; he gave the people representation and a smile of forgiveness rather than turn a blind cheek and a scowl with youth-gray eyes and a cold, cool look. The Newfrey was not his father; and because of this, the Goddess hated him. Millennia of identical occurrences caused her to continuously grow tired of the doings of magickal and humane beings—they forced her hand. Entertainment was paid for, even by the Goddess, and she was willing to sacrifice a few of her pawns to win the game. The people were pieces of a chessboard, and her boredom could never stand seeing too many on the playing ground. Winning was never interesting without a challenge, and the Goddess understood this better than everyone else. She pitied the Newfrey for what she did to him—made him the son of an intimacy worker and a tyrant, forced him into poverty at a young age, led him up an insurgence latter until he had to face his own father and kill him. She gave him a wife—poor woman; she’d forever be known as the Newfrey’s wife; the bastard’s wife—and two successors who had not arrived yet. The Newfrey sat upon his throne, a crown of copper-gold resting upon his head, a kind smile scrawled across his face, a line of magick flowing around his arms like a snake of playful yellow light. He was proud of his victory seventeen years ago, his ringed fingers intertwined with his wife’s, as he listened to the lunes, and Germanics, and Romdows sing and dance on the Night of Freedom (or Nights, technically). Blue reflected on his face as he gazed out the window, fireworks and waves of magick flowing through the air as if the physical manifestations themselves were overjoyed at this celebration. His wife rested a hand on her stomach, an expression of delight and stillness on her face. She thought of children and true love and of the stories the Newfrey told her of his parents and the takedown of the Frey himself. The Newfrey thought of the hardships he and his people were forced to overcome for an era of mercy and a nontyrannical government, how many of his friends and family were forced to give their lives for a cause his father laughed at. He wondered of those who survived: the Frey’s wife and his half-brother (were they safe and completely at ease where they were, if they were alive at all?); his mother (was she still so desperate for power she was willing to throw her own son into a pit of fire to do so?); his father (ironically, the Newfrey thought he’d be proud; the Frey always approved of doing anything for power; the Frey would find pride in seeing his son overthrow him, the Newfrey knew); his wife (how odd; marriage and children—things he never thought he’d see at any point in his life; he’d always thought he was a better soldier than a king, and now he was both, and a father; how wonky his life had become); and, finally, his people (the people he’d betrayed, the people he’d love, the people who’d helped him gain the position he had today, the people who hated him, the people who died, the people who lived, the people who believed him to be the bastard, the Frey’s son, and nothing more, the people who believed him to be the rumored hero and savior of this day and age). He wondered so much, he regretted so much, he knew so little, and he expected so little, and thought to himself: This is my country—the country I will fight to protect, the country I will give anything for. I will not let anyone destroy it in the way my father nearly did; I will not let anyone destroy everything I’ve worked so hard to rebuild. I will make my people happy, will keep my family safe, and I will die making sure of this fact. The Goddess snickered a little. Very noble, she knew. Very brave, she knew. A great pawn to sacrifice—so willing to go to his death without much encouragement. She watched over the town of Vronnock as they danced and sang and played with magick like child’s play. She watched the kids with their youth-gray hair and youth-rhubarbboots run around and cause havoc; she watched the adults with their purplebrown locks drink until their hearts stopped and eyes closed. She watched the music intertwined with hexes and charms like second nature, and the freedom of the people grow until hearts were full and chalices were emptied. The Goddess watched the gold skies dim, and the Night of Freedom was officially over. She laughed. With a single flick of her wrist, a thousand meters away, a den of wolves awoke. Hungry, angry, violent, the wolves snarled at each other, froze, and followed the Goddess’s commands. They stalked toward the village with the speed of a youth drunk on magick, and the Goddess watched as the Newfrey realized what’d happened. He bolted upwards, youth-gray eyes flashing and a sense of conscious ignoring his wife’s questions. The SHRINK of a sword was familiar to him, the Goddess knew, and now, he was forced to recognize this. In the beginning, all was quiet. Before civilization, before tyrannical kings and rebellions, before the tendrils of easy magick and the stomping of youth, before the clattering of wineglasses and beer bottles, before the laughter of the Goddess and the howling of wolves, everything for a thousand meters around was silent. When that changed, nobody knew, but in the modern day, high buildings and golden skylines were echoing with the sounds of music and magick. Entertainment was often paid for, and the Newfrey now suffered this price. The Goddess laughed once more—winning was never interesting without a challenge, and she knew this better than everybody else. She wondered if this was what fun felt like.

A Game of Tyranny, by alizaarches

Inspired by the prompt: “Know-it-all: Write about something you are very knowledgeable about, for example a favorite hobby or passion of yours.”

Okay: My explanation of the prompt is that 99% of my stories are fantasy, and so I’d like to think I know a lot about it. Just sayin’.

Warning: This is WAY longer than I expected, but I like it.

[alizaarches]

A prophecy is told, listened to from a world full of gods and monsters. Several extraordinary beings fight with everything they have, Giving everything they have. With heavy-hearted sacrifices, A false guise on those who once they trusted, They survive hardships unlike anything faced before. A kind of somber silence falls over the crew, From a place with beautiful sunsets and secrets too lively to understand, As they blame themselves for their adventures of suffering, With a burning hope to save those who they’ve lost.

A Verse of Précis, by alizaarches

Inspired by the prompt: “Book Inspired: Think of your favorite book. Now write a poem that sums up the entire story in 10 lines.”

For the record, my favorite book is the Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan (it’s the third book of a five-book series, The Heroes of Olympus, but it’s my fave).

Also, Google told me précis means summary, so the title basically means “A Poem of Summary.” I’m clever, aren’t I?

[alizaarches]

She called it Atlantis—an empty city of former great renown, with uncaring lights and a silver crown. Her right sleeve was wrapped in brown leather, a wrist guard enveloping everything except two fingers. Her left arm was covered gracefully in light silk, glowing vibrant blue against the darkness of the hallways. Her bulletknife was tucked into her red bulletmetal belt, her eyes constantly examining the entryways of enemies who were no longer there. She crossed her legs upon the throne, long chains of gold hanging from her ears—her sisters always called her “too much” of everything, even through her fashion sense. Glass eyeballs framed with gunpowder kohl took in the room; her own small, foul kingdom. The stormed steel chamber was littered with cobwebs, rusted gold bayonets, and slowly putrefying soldiers—one used to be her friend; a traitor, through and through. Atlantis was dark, and shining grey, and quiet. The girl stood from her throne, her blue silk scarf flowing like a train behind her. She grasped her bulletknife with her leather-branded hand, and elegantly gesticulated as if summoning a servant, dropping to the hellradiant floor, a diamond band cloaked around her left ring finger. She strode with confidence at the large Ashwood gate, stepping over the copper insignia of the traitor and their home’s army and shoving open the door, which bigger than three royal chariots. The girl stopped in the doorway. It was an oblong, lengthy hallway of black and white, harsh and disorienting. All the walls burned her eyes with colorless hues, the ground pure obsidian, as if there were no ground at all. She cautiously stepped one gunmetal boot onto the ebony vestibule, flashes of the past slammed into her cognizance: her sisters calling her a coward, forcing their youngest sister join them in the annual Judicious Hunt; the girl, the most helpless and untrained, chosen as the quarry, being only handed her trusty bulletmetal dagger called Peony and said a fine sayonara; her mother fighting the Huntmaster, refusing to allow her fledgling daughter to be hunted by unreasonable pursuers; the night of the Hunt—her mother choosing to run with her, protecting her with everything she had; her mother falling with a blood-covered Peony in her hands, passing all forms of skill, traits, and intelligence the girl had not gotten from genetics to her, warning her of the cruelty of reality and sovereignty, and explaining to her of a city she’d loved and been forced to abandon; her mother describing of the northwest arctic wasteland, with a single entrance of an ancient metropolis no longer inhabited by humanity, where she would be safe; the smell of wet wolf and the taste of pennies shrouding her senses; the fall through hills of snow and ice like a brunette Alice in Wonderland (minus the drugs); the fight for survival in a place she deemed Atlantis; becoming the new ruler over a magickal city of ice and corpses. Metz Hansard dropped to her knees, stunned and pained in the stomach. She growled and flung her silk-scarfed arm forward. A loud slam echoed through the antechamber—a crack the size of a lightning strike ripped across the entryway to Hansard’s empire. The magic flashed out of the hallway, removing the memories from flying through her mind and focusing the room into something non-monochrome—banana-colored ceilings, purple earth, and zircon-lithium walls; an intricate crimson-laced CFL chandelier (magic and electricity and technology were always intertwined) with a dim setting, and paintings of gardens of curly willows, eremuri, heathers, and larkspurs. Metz brushed the dust off her jean trousers, made a gun with her hands, and shot a few make-believe bullets at the walls with “pew-pew” noises. She twisted Peony between her digits, flipping it in the air. The bulletknife shifted its shape until it became a meter-long staff of iron and bismuth, with an impressive silver pinecone-shaped head. She shot a blast of glowing blue that matched her light silk from the end of Peony (the bulletknife-turned-staff) at the doorway at the end of the hall—the only entrance into Atlantis, the one her mother had given to her like a treasure from a maze of multiple treasure maps. The beam of blue luminosity hit the matching Ashwood doorway with such a force, Metz heard the booming of an avalanche on the other side. She watched through the strips of windows the descending of white until it completely blocked the view of the outside. Metz pursed her lips, swung her staff casually, and returned to her throne room. She walked over the bodies of her enemies, and sat upon her throne once more. Her leathered hand tossed the staff into the air until it shifted back into its original form of the bulletmetal blade, and sheathed it. She straightened her back until the dimness shaded her face like a cloak of black. She grabbed the crown hung from the top of her armchair and placed it on her head. Pure power enveloped her body, glass eyes glowing with blue light and her digits stiffened on the arm of the throne, the ring on her left ring finger gleaming with barely-there lighting. She turned up her nose, stared into the darkness, and listened to the silence, knowing there will be no company, no more sound, for the rest of eternity. She smiled.

The Crown of Light and Shadows, by alizaarches

Inspired by the prompt: “Memory Lane: What’s it look like? How do you get there?”

So. Magic with a semi-normal prompt. I’m sensing a pattern for my writing style.

This was extremely random and set in about 97% darkness, but I hope you enjoyed it!