#fiction snippet

[therobotmonster]

I know I wasn't supposed to.

But I went into the woods.

Another me came out.

We seem to be equally suspicious that the other is the imposter. I keep checking him for roots and he keeps doing the same to me. Is it a double bluff? Is he gaslighting me into thinking I'm the neverwas thing and he's the human being with organs and anxiety? Is he truly unaware he's a mockery given shape? If he can be unaware of it, I can be too.

That's kind of a lonely thought, really.

-

It's been several days and the tests are all inconclusive. We both bleed normal blood that doesn't turn into a spider and jump to the ceiling when you touch it with a hot wire. We know the same trivia. We pretended to know the same stuff we forgot that we were embarrassed not to remember. We both got uncomfortable at the exact same time when we walked into the cathedral.

We arm wrestled and didn't tie somehow, but we weren't sure if winning meant he was more likely to be fake or less likely.

I worry that we don't really know anything about accursed other selves from the woods.

Wikipedia has been less than helpful.

-

Mom claims she knows which one of us is her 'first boy' but refuses to tell us on the basis that she loves us both and thinks we should get along.

He thinks she can't tell and is too embarrassed to tell us. I think its because she wants to double her chance at grandkids. The difference in opinion is interesting, but is it a sign of an imposter, or the divergence of our experiences?

-

We've decided to flip for the job. I won, so I don't have to find new work. I don't know if that's a win.

I think the curse is that neither one of us is an unnatural imposter out to kill the other. Or else whichever one of us is the monster has realized they don't think my life is worth killing to steal.

I know I think about smashing that copy of my own face open with a rusty fire axe, a gush of sea water and blasphemous screams roiling from the empty hole that should contain bone and brains, and it just seems like a lot of trouble and effort.

I think I'm going to start going by my middle name.

-

Another me just showed up on our doorstep.

He's caked in mud, sticks and twigs in his hair, babbling about harrowing experiences. I'm fixing him some tea while the other-other me hands him the pamphlet we made just in case.

Now he's telling us about the Night King. Like we don't know.

I need a bigger place.

[chen-nn]

Prologue - Blood Stains Don't Wash Off

Tw: mentions of abuse, and violence. Dead dove, do not eat.

There are countless ways to avoid violence. But avoidance doesn't mean survival.

Violence is stitched into the seams of existence — a pulse running beneath every century, every age. It thrives, adapts, becomes more creative, more cruel. We like to pretend we are better than our past, but reality doesn't flinch under the weight of our illusions. Even in a world infused with magic, people are still monsters. And monsters don't need fangs or claws. Sometimes, they wear the faces of your neighbors. Or your own family.

Hagarin was not the victim that day.

She was the witness.

A child, too young to spell her own name properly, stood paralyzed in the doorway as her mother's body became a canvas for violence. A fist to the ribs, a boot to the spine. Blood, spit, sobs. The kind of sounds that become permanent residents in your skull. Hagarin clamped her small hands over her eyes, praying that darkness would protect her, but the sharp metallic click of a pistol tore through the air.

"Watch."

A command. Not a plea. A curse.

She was forced to see it all — her mother's skin bruised into unrecognizable shades, her breath turned into shallow gasps until there was no breath left to take.

Hagarin's mother died that night, leaving behind three little girls and a silence too loud to bear.

In a world glutted with magic, you'd think there would be a spell for justice. But magic didn't save her. Magic was a luxury — one used more often to destroy than to heal. Power and violence walk hand in hand like childhood friends, both feeding off each other's hunger. Hagarin understood this at an age when most children only understand fairy tales.

Those who crave chaos? They are not misguided souls. They are predators, drunk on their own sense of invincibility, poisoning everything they touch. They rip the seams of peace just to see what spills out.

And Hagarin? She learned young that survival is not a right — it's a skill.

At seven years old, she became a mother, a protector, a builder of shelters, a scavenger of scraps. She wasn't good at any of it. But no one else was left to try.

She used magic to knock down trees because her hands were too weak. She built a shack with trembling fingers and whispered prayers that the walls would hold for at least one night. Her sisters clung to each other for warmth, while Hagarin stood guard at the entrance, eyes fixed on the sky. The moon was too bright — like it was exposing their helplessness for all the world to see.

That night, her lips moved in silent prayer — not to gods, but to whatever force was out there listening.

"Please. Let me be strong enough. Just for them. Even if it breaks me."

Tears traced down her dirt-streaked face, and for the first time, she allowed herself to feel the weight of what had been taken from her. But grief is a luxury you can't afford when you're responsible for someone else's survival.

They walked for days — blistered feet on broken ground — until the steel skyline of Aloy City appeared like a mirage in the distance. Aloy, the City of Metals. A place where survival was possible, but only if you were useful.

"Are we almost there?" the youngest sister asked, her voice soft from exhaustion.

Hagarin squeezed her hand. "Just five more hours." She wasn't sure if that was true. But hope tastes better when you lie with confidence.

"You're just guessing," Hanari, her twin, muttered.

"Obviously." Hagarin shrugged.

Hanari, loud and bright despite the darkness they carried, was everything Hagarin was not. They bickered like breathing — every argument a strange lifeline that reminded them both they were still alive. Still sisters.

Aloy was both salvation and sentence. A city where children like them became projects — charity cases processed and filed into the system. At the help center, they sat across from a woman who asked too many questions with too soft a voice. What happened to your parents? What did you see? How do you feel?

Hagarin wanted to scream. Instead, she said nothing. Hanari did all the talking — filling the silence with half-truths and protective lies, all while Hagarin's hands dug crescent moons into her palms beneath the table.

When they were placed onto a bus, bound for an orphanage disguised as a "facility," Hagarin didn't cry. She just stared out the window, watching her reflection blur against the world passing by.

Life at the facility was not kind, but it was stable — which was almost the same thing. They were clothed, taught to read, trained to summon spells from nothing but breath and willpower. Time passed, and they grew taller, sharper, harder. But Hanari never lost her brightness. The little sister never lost her innocence.

And Hagarin never lost the weight in her chest — the cold iron reminder that peace is temporary, and safety is always conditional.

She watched from the window as Hanari and their sister chased each other through the grass, laughing like the world hadn't tried to crush them under its boot.

For a moment, Hagarin let herself believe it was possible — that they could outrun the ghosts, the memories, the trauma woven into their bones.

But only for a moment.

Because Hagarin knew better than anyone: The past never stays buried.

And the worst monsters aren't the ones hiding in shadows. They're the ones smiling in the light.

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 2,731 words.

Next chapter: Chapter 1: Present time

[madreehasgonenuts]

Thoughts?

Here’s a little sneak peek from a story I’ve been working on. It’s got adventure, survival, and some supernatural stuff brewing in the background 👀 Meet M, Tanner, and a whole lot of trouble.

‘In a world where the truth is buried, survival is the only option.’

M rushes into the old barn where they’d been hiding.

“Quick,” she says quietly, turning to Tanner, who’s just waking up. “They’re coming. We need to go.”

“Ugh, what are you talking about? Leave me alone,” Tanner mumbles, still half-asleep.

“The Officers! They’re here—right around the corner. We need to go now,” they repeat, the urgency sharp in her voice.

Tanner’s eyes snap open. “What? How the heck did they find us?” he says, scrambling to his feet and rushing toward Alex.

“Oh shoot!” he whisper-yells.

“Quiet!” Alex hisses, jabbing an elbow into Tanner’s stomach. “Grab your stuff. We’re out of here.”

“Any signs of those kids?” the captain of the search party asks.

“No, sir. Not yet. Boss said we’d find them around here, so we’re sweeping the area. It won’t be long,” one officer replies.

“About damn time,” the captain mutters. “They can’t keep getting away with this… hurting innocent children like that.”

“Over here!” another officer shouts. “We’ve found something!”

Not sure where it’s going yet, but I’m vibing with it .Would you read a webcomic/manga version of this? Let me know!!

[deepdreamnights]

"Lia?"

"Yes Zane?"

"I've been wondering, about the Cyberwhatist-"

"The CyberGenesis of the Ancients."

"Yeah, why don't I get a sleek fleshy body with a sparkly web of metal on my delicate parts?"

"LOKAN was programmed with the sum of the ancients' knowledge and cultural output."

"So-"

"Dataset bias, mostly."

-

The image(s) above in this post were made using an autogenerated prompt and/or have not been modified/iterated extensively. As such, they do not meet the minimum expression threshold, and are in the public domain.

Prompt: two characters walking past each other in an artwork, in the style of perry rhodan, metallic accents, yoji shinkawa, seapunk, charles vess, realistic renderings of the human form, olympus pen f

[bitletsanddrabbles]

Fic Snippet: Twins Shopping

Okay, so, back when my knee first went zombie victim on me and I asked if there was anything I could do to make people happy, @elijahgeorgavic asked for a Thomas/Mary Twin snippet. Since my brain has threatened divorce if I so much as look at the Thomas-As-Heir fic at the moment*, I thought about scenes that didn't exist that could exist that didn't have room to exist and came up with the two of them shopping in Ripon. It was originally going to be a bit longer, but I decided I didn't like it and stopped here.

So here, @elijahgeorgavic, have some sibling banter.

Thomas slowed to a stop, his eyes on the reflection in the store window. There was something about the image in the glass that made it seem otherworldly, like he really had fallen down a rabbit hole. The clothes weren’t his, even though he’d gone to London and been fitted for them the previous week. The hat wasn’t anything he’d wear, even though he had purchased it on the same trip. Little details in the cut and quality kept catching his eye, drawing his attention to the stranger that was him.

He might have stood there for hours if Mary’s voice hadn’t cut through his thoughts, amused but with a sharp edge of exasperation. “I know footmen are supposed to be handsome, but if you don’t rein in your vanity, we’re never going to get any shopping done.”

Tearing his eyes away from the window, he gave her a rueful smile. “Sorry. I’m not actually admiring my reflection, I’m more being unnerved by it.” She arched here eyebrows and he elaborated. “It’s the clothes. They keep catching me off guard in the reflection.”

Tilting her head to the side, she looked him over. “I suppose I’m so used to changing fashion, I don’t think much of it if my dress is a different cut than I’m used to. The look well on you, at least.” Her lips quirked at the corners. “It’s obvious you spared no expense.”

“Well, can’t very well uphold the honour of the family if I’m not dressed appropriately, can I?” he quipped back, his mood lightning a bit. It was still odd to be bantering with her, of all people, but if he ignored the little voice in his head telling him that Carson would have his hide, it was a familiar enough interaction that it came naturally. “I have to look my best.”

“Your best?” The claim earned him a very arch look. “I don’t know about that. People might think us odd if you did your shopping in white tie.”

“Is that your way of saying I looked better in my livery?”

He’d meant it as a joke, but something must have slipped into his voice, something unintended, because she gave him a startled look that held no hint of laughter. For a moment she looked almost apologetic and he was going to explain that he’d not been serious when she said, very slowly and deliberately, “No. It’s more my way of saying you wear black well.”

“Oh, well.” Uncertain quite what to say to that, he settled on, “That’s one of the many things we have in common, then.”

With a smile that put them back on easy terms, she asked, “So, was there anything in particular you wanted to pick up while we were in town?”

*I keep telling it that if it will just finish the revisions we'll be done and it won't have to think about it ever again, but it won't listen...probably because it knows I'll just make it think about part two at that point. >.>

[royal-whims]

“Aw love,” she muttered softly, petting the little girl’s head, “Don’t you know people like us aren’t to be associated with?”

[therobotmonster]

But if that's the case, then little would be as terrifying as W.H. Harrison National park, because since its opening in 1967, no one has ever gone missing in W.H. Harrison National park. And that's just silly because WHHNP is the gem of the parks service.

Consisting of fifty square miles of beautiful hiking paths, natural geysers, hot springs and 'Scratch's Rootceller", a sixty-foot wide U-shaped fissure in the ground extended to a verified depth of .73 kilometers, WHHNP would seem to be no different from Yellowstone, Zion, or Los Alamos.

But we know better thanks to special orders from then vice-president Humphrey, who demanded exhaustive counts of visitors entering and leaving W.H. Harrison National Park be recorded and maintained for a period no less than 90 years.

Thanks to this remarkable act of proactive bureaucracy we have records showing that the park has always released at least as many tourists as it has welcomed in each operating season, implying a 103% safety record for it's entire operational period.

Sure, there have been frequent calls to cut back on park budgets in light of this success. Accusations that the park must be ridiculously overstaffed and extravagantly monitored if no one has gone missing at all in 57 years are frequent. This couldn't be farther from the truth. The park employs only five full time rangers, and this record is only possible due to their tireless efforts.

Why I can't tell you how many times I've seen Ranger Michaels burning the midnight oil hours after I saw him drive home after the end of his shift. The dedication of the W.H. Harrison National Park staff is beyond reproach, and the gift shop is the most affordable miniature geodes in the whole parks system (only $35.99 each plus taxes and fees.)

So forget any silliness about how statistically normal it is for people to be lost in the wilderness when they don't have the sense your lord gave a billygoat, and come visit the wonder and beauty of William Henry Harrison National Park.

We love to see you come, then go, and go again.

Any conspiracy theory about people going missing in National Parks is automatically silly to me. Like "Why are National Parks such a hotbed of disappearances???" because they're full of idiots. You've got thousands of people who've never pissed outdoors in their life wandering around the woods/desert/mountain with zero experience and zero gear and zero understanding that this place can kill them. You don't see as many disappearances in wild areas because people don't go to them unless they have some background knowledge. Whereas you get tour buses full of old folks and suburban families shuttling people into National Parks 365 days a year. If you took the same amount of buffoons and dropped them in the actual wilderness the disappearances would be significantly higher than at the parks. Use your brain.

[historylaura]

WIP snippets

Putting it out there but would anyone be interested in seeing snippets of my WIP's?

I have been quiet recently due to my offline life and my muse taking a holiday but I have been working on things. Mainly my Sophie Meet's the Godwins (William Godwin, Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley) and Benedict and Sophie Meet Jane Austen and Benedict meets Wilberforce.

Would anyone be interested in seeing some little bits of them?

[the-modern-typewriter]

Hello! Big fan of your writing. Would you like to write a snippet about an evil vampire who is only soft to their human even though they swear that the human is nothing to them more than a convenient source of food .

"You are bleeding."

"I'm sorry. I've not-" The human gestured vaguely at the bowl. "I've not wasted any. I swear."

The vampire appeared at their side in a flash, and that would have been absolutely terrifying if the human wasn't so used to it. Well. It was still a little terrifying. Everything about them was always a little terrifying.

The vampire's cold gaze roamed between the large gash on the human's hand to the elegant mixing bowl tinged bloody, then to the knife left clattered on the counter. The remnants of dinner prep.

Their eyes went pinprick scarlet. That, and the slight inhale of a breath, was the only sign of the uncontrollable and insatiable thirst that so drove their species.

"Stupid accident," the human said. They felt a little woozy. "Sorry. I know it's not as good when it's not fresh but I- um." Well. The generous description was that they panicked.

They had no idea what the vampire would do if they wasted blood, even by accident.

"Hm." The vampire picked up the sharp kitchen knife, licking the wasted droplets from its wicked edge. "Have you considered trying to stem the bleeding?"

It took the human a second to process, to wrench themselves away from staring.

"Didn't get that far. I just sort of thought, 'shit, blood'. Catch it!"

"How considerate."

"You know me," the human tried for a laugh, "I aim to please and not die."

"Indeed."

The laugh had come out a bit strangled. The human cleared their throat. "Speaking of catching blood...would you like to be my receptacle instead of the mixing bowl, seeing as you're here now anyway? Hungry?"

Though that raised the question of why exactly their vampire had appeared. The forces of darkness and evil did not usually make themselves known before sundown, even if the manor was all tinted and sun-blocked windows. The smell of fresh blood must have woken them.

The vampire responded by reaching down and ripping a length off their no doubt expensive and very fine linen night shirt.

The human's eyes widened. "Uh..."

"Hand."

The human obediently surrendered their hand. They watched in mild astonishment as the vampire made quick work of cleaning and bandaging their hand, using their ruined clothes like an old-fashioned tourniquet.

"Didn't know you knew how to do that," the human mumbled. "You know we have a first aid kit in the bathroom upstairs?"

"A what?"

"A first aid kit. Medicine kit. With bandages and plasters and stuff."

"And yet you were bleeding into your mixing bowl."

"Well, the bathroom's a long way to go dripping blood on your floors."

"Hm."

"I'm sorry I woke you. It's - I'm okay. I really didn't waste any."

"Good. Your blood is precious. How is your hand? Does it hurt?"

"It's okay. I'm okay."

"You need to be more careful."

"I'm sorry."

"You're a fragile thing, you could have taken a finger off."

"Sorry. It won't happen again. I promise."

"Hm." The vampire's sharp gaze flicked over them again.

The human realised, belatedly, that the vampire was still cradling their hand. They flushed. The vampire let go.

"Sit," the vampire ordered. "What are you making? Tell me what to do."

"What?" They were sure they'd only cut their hand, not suffered some form of brain damage that caused hallucinations.

The vampire's eyes narrowed; ever disinclined to repeating themselves.

"Uh..." The human swallowed. "Chop the veg. Put veg in frying pan."

They watched the vampire get to work. It was bizarre. They'd never seen the vampire do anything around the house. Their immortality was a thing of hedonistic cruelties, tempered only by the fact that it was easier to pay someone to take the role of blood bag in the modern age than kidnap them.

"You really don't have to do that for me," they said.

"Are you suggesting that somewhere in the last thousand years I became incapable of chopping vegetables?"

"No. No, of course not."

"Then hold your tongue. I don't pay you to question me or for your opinions. You're a walking blood bag."

"Right. Right, yeah. Sorry."

The vampire made them dinner, following instructions in a way that the human truly had thought them too proud for, as the sun sank slow and pretty beyond the window.

"Thank you," the human said, nonplussed, when the vampire eventually loaded a full dinner plate. They were more nonplussed when the vampire didn't hand it over, though, simply holding a fork up to the human's mouth. "Er...my hand is okay. I can hold cutlery. I know I don't heal vampire fast but..."

"You're questioning me again."

"Right. Sorry." The human accepted the mouthful of food, then another. Their stomach did something weird and flipping beneath the vampire's strange care, their intent focus.

"Good," the vampire murmured.

In the aftermath of dinner, the night black and endless beyond the windows, they stared at each other.

The human's heart pounded. They were all too aware of the fact that the vampire could hear it. All of their normal, comfortable routines felt disrupted somehow.

They wet their abruptly dry lips.

"Don't hurt yourself again, pet," the vampire said abruptly. "That's my job."

Then they were gone.

[super-ion]

The Engineer

Part 1

I catch a glimpse of the pilot as she is wheeled towards the med bay. Her eyes have that telltale glaze of just having been wrenched out of herself.

I've never spoken a single word to her, but for a moment as the gurney slides by, those eyes briefly clear, ice blue pinning me to the spot. She raises an emaciated arm and her hand almost seems to beckon to me before something in the gurney clicks and whirs and she slips back into catatonia.

That brief moment of clarity, that piercing gaze, unsettles me. She recognized me.

It's neural bleed. I know it has to be. She doesn't know me, but Morrigan does.

Good god. In the pilot's present state of post combat haze, she probably doesn't even know where she ends and the machine begins.

Does neural bleed work both ways? Is it her head that I'm about to climb into?

My wrist strap buzzes. I have a job to do and I am late.

The pilot is a problem for the med team and the psychs.

The machine is my problem.

I hurry down the corridor, keeping my head down, avoiding the eyes of every passerby.

I don't like people.

I don't like how their eyes follow me. I don't like the whispered gossip that follows me.

One of the techs is waiting for me at the vestibule.

I don't know his name.

All clear, he says to me. Time to work your magic.

He says it without sarcasm. Others have been less kind.

Even so, he can't quite hide the leer as I strip down to the skinsuit. I don't have the physique of a pilot. My body hasn't been subjected to the stresses that ravage their bodies. Unlike them, I have fat and muscle and the skinsuit clings to every curve of my body.

I force a cursory smile and try to forget him as I walk barefoot to my destination.

The vestibule is small, windowless. It's impossible to assess the scale of the machine from here. The only part visible to me is roughly four square meters of pitted and scarred metal plating framing the access hatch and the pilot's cradle beyond.

B0-987T the stenciled lettering reads. And below, in flowing script, is “The Morrigan���.

She's a Javellin class, medium weapons fire support unit. She isn't meant to be on the front lines in a skirmish, but one-on-one, she can hold her own against a Wraith. Which is exactly what happened only a few hours ago.

I place a bare palm on the bulkhead. She thrums with some distant vibration. Her reactor is still online, still in the early stages of drawdown as she transitions to dock power.

“Hey beautiful,” I say to her.

I think of the pilot. I think of piercing blue eyes and I think of neural bleed.

I flinch my hand away.

The tech looks at me, asks if I'm alright. I'm fine, I tell him.

I climb through the hatch and into the cradle.

I feel like an interloper here. The cradle isn't calibrated for my body. Everything still smells like the pilot. Mingled with the smell of the machine is her sweat and her adrenaline and the particular scented soap that she prefers.

There is a faint whirring as her cameras track my movements from a dozen angles. The access ports open to receive me.

Against my better judgment, I imagine eagerness for this exchange.

This is immediately followed by an all too familiar sense of inadequacy. The engineers’ rig is not nearly as all encompassing as a pilots’. It's only the most basic neural interface. No haptics. No neurotransmitter feedback. No access to the suite of sensors studded throughout her hull.

I can't interface with her the way her pilot can.

My rig is a remnant from basic training. The pilot corps wanted me for my exceptional ratings in synchrony and neuro-elasticity, but after serval training exercises, they determined that I didn't have the temperament for the battlefield. I froze up too easily.

A neural rig is a massive investment and removing one will fuck a person up a hell of a lot more than installing one. The selection process is designed to weed out washouts before we even get to installation, but some of us still slip through the cracks. Most end up reassigned to logistics, operating loader mechs or piloting long haul supply frigates. But my aptitudes made me ideal for the engineering corps, so here I am.

Morrigan senses my mood and the cradle shifts slightly, aligning itself to my dimensions. Her eagerness to connect morphs into a sort of tender reassurance. It's a slippery slope, ascribing human emotions to these machines, but she does seem genuinely happy to see me.

I can never be part of what she and her pilot have, but I can be part of something in my own way.

The pilot knows about me, she would even without neural bleed. Does she envy the relationship I have with her mech? Does she envy that I can exist both together and apart with the machine?

Is she jealous of us?

Morrigan slips her jacks into my rig and my mind enters hers and I feel tension leave my body. Some dull ache that I wasn't even consciously aware of ebbs within me.

My senses dull and my visual cortex is fed a series of diagnostic logs and telemetry streams. The techs have access to the exact same data, but Morrigan highlights particular data points that she and the pilot flagged. I log them in the engineering report.

A wireframe schematic of the battlefield spreads out in my awareness. Green markers for our battlegroup. Red markers for the pack of Wraith interlopers.

I hear the ghost of music, strange and ambient, like whale song. The first time I heard it, I asked the techs about it. They had no idea what I was talking about. One even suggested I get an eval for some psych leave.

Later I realized Morrigan was singing to me. Or rather she was interpreting tightbeam comm links as something my brain could process. A human mind can't possibly interpret the full datastream, but with Morrigans's rendition, I can suss out the basic meanings. The battlegroup is a choir and Morrigan is playing me their song.

I caused quite a stir when I first made that connection and started flagging battle events the analysts had missed.

I survey the battlefield before me, reconstructed from feeds from TacCom and all the individual mechs.

Morrigan and I have done this enough times that she knows my preferred display layout, but she holds back, allowing me to pull off the virtual displays on my peripheral vision. There's an odd sort of intimacy to it, her letting me take charge like this.

God-knows how many tons of metal and ceramic and miles and miles of wire and optic fiber and see waits eagerly for me to start the playback sim. She wants to show off. She wants me to assess the actions of her and her pilot and tell them they did well.

Other engineers, few as we are, have mentioned similar experiences with their assigned machines.

“Alright,” I whisper so that only she can hear. “Show me the dance. Sing me the song.”

(Next)

[therobotmonster]

It is painful to keep secrets, especially important ones. Dates and times, hours and minutes, names and places can raise nations or fell kings, if they are the right ones. Those that want those secrets will inflict every cruelty to pry them out of otherwise discreet lips.

Far, far away, Prometheus smiled through yet another liver removal. The bird went upon its way and the wound began to knit.

He kept his secret. The burden of the bigger picture demanded it. Zeus was kinder than Kronos, who was kinder than the primal chaos that came before. The pattern would hold, so long as the titan's tongue was likewise held.

In the early days, when Zeus would come to interrogate him each day between the bird's feasts, Prometheus had allowed himself one small slip. Had the Lord of Olympus been less enraged he might have recognized the prophecy when the Firebringer spoke it under the veil of defiant spite.

When Prometheus laughed through gritted teeth and stared the King of the Gods right in the eye, and prophesied.

You wish to know, oh mighty King of Olympus, merciful and just?

Fuck around and find out.

You’re an ancient Greek man coming home from 4 months of war to find your wife 3 months pregnant. Now you’ve embarked on a solemn quest: to punch Zeus in the face.

[chen-nn]

Chapter 2: Confusion

This chapter includes:

Headaches, migraines, and medical distressInsomnia and exhaustion Mild body horror (temporary sensory loss, forced unconsciousness)Mentions of an accident (without graphic detail)Mild language and frustration between characters

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Hagarin's POV

After a few months of studying books, history, and magic, we finally reach a moment wherein we are permitted to experiment on what kind of alchemy power we can cast.

And I feel a headache growing in my head today. Come to think of it, my head doesn't seem to stop aching within those past months. I often pass out, and a visual of people's memories flashes through my mind.

This led to insomnia.

Pills weren't enough to ease the growing ache in my head. All I ever had to do was sleep away the pain. I have no idea what is going on with me. Yesterday evening, I instantly slept on my bed when I returned from school. My siblings were growing worried about my antics, and I often left them hanging with lame excuses. Truth be told, I also don't know what's going on.

But in all seriousness, I want to find out what is going on with me. For I don't want to worry my sisters, and I also don't want to wait for death knocking at my door for not taking care of myself.

Today is the day we practice magic.

I silently wore my shoes while tolerating Hanari's loud munching on her macaroni food. "You are so silent, and it's killing me," she bluntly said.

I turned to her to retort a reply, but the sharp headache suddenly spiked up again. I had a frown etched on my face and couldn't hear her properly, but I could see her speaking. But why can't I hear her?

"Hey, are you okay?" I heard her faint voice and buried my face in my hands as I steadied my breathing. Another memory flashed in my mind. She held my shoulder to slightly shake me awake.

"Why are you avoiding my gaze, Hagarin?" She said as irritation lingered in her voice. "I can't explain it," I answered, and it sums up the confusion and tension hanging in the air between us.

"No, you explain." Hanari said while attempting to make me look at her, but I closed my eyes instead. "wait, my head hurts." another lame excuse flew out of my mouth.

"Yeah, I can see that. Is your vision going bad?" She asked worriedly.

"I think...?" I lied.

It's not about my vision.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After arguing with Hanari, we both ended up going to school anyway. We are currently doing experiments. Many discovered a few tricks to manipulate an object to float them in the air, and many discovered things on their own, and here I am, blankly staring at the small white flowers that the spell I created.

Weird. The image that flashed in my mind seemed that it didn't happen. Was it because I avoided something, and that's why the outcome was different? I don't understand.Hanari was supposed to shake me. To snap out of my daze. It didn't happen. Why?

"Hagarin. Hello?"

I snapped out of my daze, and my eyes wandered to the person who called me. I braced myself for the headache forming from a mile away.

"Yes?" I stared at her. I somewhat felt...Glad? Glad that I didn't feel any sharp pain, headache, or worse, a migraine. It's Ms. Renée who called me. "You've been staring blankly at that flower. What is going on?" concern lingered against her voice as I avoided her gaze.

“Yes.” what?

“I meant to say, I’m okay.”

"From your actions, it doesn't seem like it." She said with a hint of amusement in her tone. I let out a sigh and hesitated whether I should share this annoying headache with her or not.

"Lately, I've been feeling extreme headaches." I started.

"And that headache hinders my ability to do daily tasks with ease." I sighed and felt another migraine from a mile away. "As exaggerated as I make it sound, it does really hurt like a dinosaur stepping on my head." I dramatically expressed making her deadpan.

"You would've died if that's the capacity of the pain of the headache is giving you." She crossed her arms. "Go on and continue." She waved her hand dismissively while checking her phone.

"When the headache continued, images kept flashing in my mind. It's as if I could see what could happen." I sighed. "I later learned about it today because I literally saw a bus flash in my mind, and it hit a little girl on the road."

Renée abruptly stopped scrolling on her phone and paused. "what?" Was all she uttered.

"5:40 AM, near the cathedral, at the Osuado street..." She muttered under her breath, however, that didn't go unnoticed by me.

"How do you know? It wasn't aired in the news..." I replied as she stared at me. My eyes widened when I saw her glowing. Her amber eyes were glowing as the faint gold color was added a touch up to the bright light.

"Hagarin." Her voice echoed, and before I knew it, our surroundings turned grey. Except for us.

"Ms. Renée...?" I muttered worriedly as she walked towards me. "You're power is no ordinary."

"And, I'm sorry if I failed to notice this sooner Hagarin. I shall put you to sleep and worry not, you'll feel at ease once you see the light again." I heard her voice echo as she spoke. But why?

I saw her hand come in contact with my forehead and felt my lids grow heavy until the last glimpse I saw was Renée's figure.

And everything went black. - What day was it? Was it night or day? I'm hungry.

Muffled sounds of voices entered my hearing. I couldn't see anything. My eyes wouldn't open when I tried to. My senses were working but my sight seemed to have other plans.

Why can't I open my eyes? What happened?

I have to wake up. I have to know what is going on. I have no choice but to do this.

3...2..1...

I forced myself to suddenly move and that made me effectively open my eyes because I accidentally hit my arm with a metal. I let the surroundings ponder inside my head and finally realized. I'm at the clinic.

and on a hospital bed.

How long was I out for?

"Thank whatever gods that granted you to wake up." I heard a voice beside me. It startled me when it was Hanari. "What happened?" We both said at the same time making me deadpan while she just gave me an expression filled with disbelief.

"Don't play with me right now." She returned the same deadpanned expression as mine. "I knew something was wrong with you, and you weren't telling me. What are you? 4? Do I have to baby you for you to tell me?" She said as I only sighed out of irritation. Of all the things I could get, why do I have to deal with her unwavering concern the first time I open my eyes after passing out?

"Look, I don't know what is going on with me either," I answered. It made her give me an exasperated sigh as if the world was gonna collide. "You could've told me about you're fucking migraine." Hanari gave me a stern expression. "And what?" I deadpanned.

"What do you mean "What?" Do you not know how much worry and concern I felt when I saw you being carried here? Ms. Renée told me you are experiencing headaches!" she shook my bed out of frustration.

"Oh, right. Ms. Renée." I thought for a moment making her let out a scoff. "So? Are you not gonna explain and wait for her to return?" Hanari crossed her arms as she waited impatiently on the chair.

"alright, but you gotta answer my questions too."

"deal." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1,316 words.

next chapter

[starmocha]

The chat is literally titled "I Miss You" 🥺

So he concocted a plan and bribed a child patient to help him lmao

Zayne having Cindy send voice messages to MC from his phone during work at the hospital 🥹🥹🥹

Can you just picture him directing her on what to say? Like, he was probably in the patient room checking in or in the middle of an examination, and maybe Cindy notices he looks a little sad, so the two worked out this plan and Zayne coaches her on what to say 🥹🥹🥹🥹

The mental image of Zayne stopping Cindy from revealing his treachery 😭😭

"[...] and I get what I want." ZAYNE??? SIR??? THE AUDACITY. ok babe whatever you want ily

[watercolorfreckles]

Could you do a story where a guard of a Supermax prison befriends a supervillain, because he treats him like a genuine human being instead of an animal; and later, all the power-dampeners suddenly fail; and all these villains just revolt against the guards; but supervillain makes sure he’s safe since he was always kind to him?

I understand if you don’t want to!!❤️

Hello! This has been sittin in my inbox for many months during my huge writing rut, sorry about that! I know you also gave this prompt to @the-modern-typewriter and she's been making an incredible series with it on patreon! I changed some things around because I don't want to in any way attempt some sad copy of her interpretation, but I was still inspired by the prompt itself, so I've taken some fairly big liberties to avoid any significant similarities! Hope that's okay! Also, please manage your expectations, I do not compare to the magic that is TMT's writing 😆

TW: Brief depictions of body horror. Violence.

The power blew out in sections. The lights dissolved sector by sector with a sickening whine and click–one by one–in approach.

The commotion ripped Eloise from the fictional world she was lost in, aged page corners still pinched beneath her thumb. Her spirited storytelling abruptly died behind her teeth.

Somewhere in the distance, one person shouted. Two.

Her gaze flicked behind them to the door isolating herself and the bound supervillain from the other sectors of the Maximum Security Prison for Powered Individuals or, as everyone called it, The Max. Seeing nothing but black beyond the bullet-proof glass, her attention snapped forward again to the supervillain imprisoned across from her. 

Was this the start of some elaborate escape plan on his part? Why did it have to happen on a day that she was stuck fulfilling her community service hours instead of being something she could safely gawk at in the newspaper from a distance in a few days? Her stomach did a nauseated flip. 

“What are you doing?” she blurted, voice quivering only a little. Her fingers tightened around her book.

The villain made a show of looking pointedly at his restraints. Wrists strung taut and chained to either wall, he shrugged an innocent shoulder at her as if to say “clearly, nothing.” He was perched on the edge of his bed like a bird, tilting his head with a matching sort of probing curiosity. 

For all the chaos outside of the room, Artisan had not a hair out of place. He appeared perfectly unconcerned, though as thoroughly trapped as ever: ankles shackled, arms stretched uselessly apart from each other. The power-dampening collar wrapped around his neck still blipped a faint red light, indicating it was active. 

The prisoners were rioting. Surely they couldn’t get too far? Containing the most dangerous of powered individuals was, after all, the express purpose of the facility…

The lights above them flickered, dipping the room in and out of inky darkness before settling into a dimly lit haze. Eloise’s breath stalled. The imposing dark felt like a threat, as if the lights could keep the monsters at bay. It only made a little sense, in the way that a child feels safe from the monsters under their bed as long as their nightlight is plugged in.

Except that these monsters were real. The most dangerous in the country. And she was currently feet away from the monster that made even other monsters run.

He hadn’t seemed so bad in the time that she’d known him. Quiet, impassive, yet twisting her gut with pity any time she eyed his barbaric restraints. The least she could do–while crossing off her hours–was to read the supervillain a story every few days. She couldn’t change his fate. Couldn’t make him more comfortable. What she could do was rattle off, sheepishly, about fictional worlds and impactful characters in literature and the way that a well-crafted story could transport you somewhere better.

A crash, gunshots, a scream. Tension racketed through Eloise’s shoulders. More shouts chased thundering footsteps.

Things were going very, very, wrong. And she was very much out of her depth.

Eloise jolted as something struck the door, her special-edition copy of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein falling to the ground and skidding away.

Finally, the lights cut out. With it, every noticeable piece of tech died. All of the energy felt sucked out of the room as if vacuumed. The camera’s blinking light disappeared. Alarms that should have been wailing cut silent. Speakers, keypads, and security systems, all dead. The secondary generator hadn’t sprung to life yet. That meant that this was more than a simple power outage. This was a calculated revolt.

 Eloise’s mind raced through a list of everything else that must have been failing. Coms. Sedative gas. Shock collars. Layers and layers of security locks…

Power dampeners.

Panic clamped vice-like and suffocating around her throat. Artisan’s collar was no longer blinking. 

She froze in the eerie silence of the cell, afraid of shattering the fragile calm. Her heart thumped, rabid, against her ribs.

Chains rattled and clinked to the floor.

Eloise bolted blindly for the door, smacking her palm against the DNA scanner while frantically swiping her “Volunteer Staff” badge through the card reader. When neither miraculously came to life, she resorted to banging on the door.

“Let me out, let me out! Guard!”

The door could only be opened by one person inside the cell and one outside simultaneously unlocking the security checkpoints. Even if the power were on, if the guard on the other side was gone���

The emergency floodlights kicked on, bathing the building in startling fluorescence. Eloise flinched, briefly stunned.

Hands grabbed her firmly from behind, yanking her backward.

Eloise yelped. “No, please–!”

The spot that she had been standing in exploded, steel door and concrete chunks collapsing into the room in a barrage of shrapnel. Something–no, someone–landed, bones crunching, at her feet. The guard who had last been standing on the opposite side of the door lay motionless. His blood puddled the floor, staining the soles of her Converse sneakers.

A horrified sound choked in Eloise’s throat.

Another supervillain strode in, eyes alight with hatred and something more–power. His lip curled, waving a mocking hand–engulfed in green energy–at the guard’s corpse. “God. I’ve wanted to do that for far too long. That one always got on my nerves.”

Artisan looked unimpressed. “You’re making a mess in my cell.”

Eloise’s breath caught. Hearing the supervillain’s voice was jarring. Artisan rarely spoke. Not that any of the other staff had ever actually attempted conversation with him… But even in news clips and YouTube videos, he carried himself with the kind of self-assured quiet of someone who had absolutely nothing to prove. His lethal efficiency did more for his reputation than any words could.

The other man was a villain named William Frenzy, a telekinetic with a gleeful taste for violence.

Faced with Artisan’s startling calm, Frenzy… paused. Faltering on a tight rope he had moments before been strolling across. 

“Yes, well. It won’t have to be your cell much longer, will it? They can’t stop all of us.” He smirked at the dead body on the floor. “Some of them can’t even stop one of us.”

Eloise shrank back toward the corner nearest the door, agonizingly slow, willing the ugly shadows from the artificial lighting to swallow her up while the supers focused on each other. She was the kind of person that people tended not to notice; a background character in the perimeter of a story that the protagonist would meet once and never spare a thought again. She wished, then, that invisibility really was her superpower.

Artisan said nothing, his steely gaze fixed upon Frenzy.

Frenzy floundered beneath the scrutiny. The smugness buffered on his face. Finally, he huffed, crossing his arms. “I made you a nice and easy door out. You���re welcome.” He flicked a hand toward the gaping hole in the wall.

Eloise inched further toward it.

Artisan tutted, and while it wasn’t aimed at her, it shot a cold thrill up her spine. She froze, briefly, before continuing her tantalizing escape. She listened to Artisan speak again. 

“I did not need anything from you. I’ll be getting out regardless. You on the other hand…” 

Eloise stared as Frenzy’s skin shrank taut against his bones, the frame of him creaking and groaning like an old tree in the wind. The air choked out of him, fingers grabbing at his jaw as it stretched open too wide. The corners of his lips tore, slitting his mouth into a gaping maw.

The faintest of smiles graced Artisan's lips as he continued, soft as ever. “Say sorry.”

Eloise didn’t wait to see the carnage through, slipping out into the hall and running.

The other sectors were washed in the same sterile glow as Artisan’s cell was, blue-tinged and horrible, like the lights in a dentist's office. She kept to the edge of things as best she could, clinging to the walls and dark corners.

There was brawling in every sector—guards with weapons drawn mowed to the ground by the creatures they had wardened for so long. A villain fell as shots rang out. Another grabbed the guard from behind, cracking his skull against their knee. 

The smell of blood stung Eloise’s nostrils. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t breathe.

She turned to flee down another hall, but two fighting inmates crashed into the doorway in front of her.

Eloise squealed, jerking backward into the belly of the room's chaos.

Don't notice me, don't notice me, don't notice me.

Everyone was so occupied by their chosen prey, maybe she could fade into the background. Maybe she could–

Her heel caught on something and she tumbled, gracelessly, to the floor. It took her several moments to register the lake of blood seeping warm and sticky into her clothing. 

Terror blurred her brain in a white flash bang.

Disappear, disappear, disappear…

“Mm. What do we have here?”

Eloise couldn’t bring herself to lift her head. She clamped her eyes shut, another child’s illusion of protection. 

The villain opposite her chuckled. He ripped her volunteer badge off of its clip against her chest. Her eyes snapped open again. She recognized him as a ringleader among superpowered thieves. They called him Volt.

“Volunteer, eh? A pretty thing like you should know better than to willingly set foot in a prison full of men with nothing left to lose. It’s been a long sentence, darling. I could make excellent use of your volunteer services. Get up.”

Numbly, ears full of static, Eloise shook her head.

Volt frowned, electricity jumping to life in his palms. “No?” He reached for her, hand nearing her throat.

“Keep your hands to yourself or I will remove them.” 

Artisan’s voice was calm. His eyes were not.

The room quieted.

Spatters of red decorated Artisan’s prison uniform. A few drops dotted his face and he brushed them away with his knuckles, smearing the crimson across his cheek. Almost lazily, he popped his neck and stretched his shoulders, no doubt sore from the strain his restraints kept him in.

The villain across from Eloise paused, sparks still dancing across his fingertips. He regarded Artisan with the same wary caution as Frenzy had.

Before he'd been… Before Artisan had…

Eloise swallowed back the nausea climbing her throat.

Finally, Volt’s hand lowered. “She's yours?”

“She's hers. Step away.”

The man hesitated a moment too long. Artisan didn't offer a second warning. 

As if puppeted, the man's fingers raised to gauge at his own eyes. He screamed, the faint evidence of Artisan’s power shimmering over him. He clawed, next, at the skin on his face, peeling it back like wet wallpaper. 

As promised, his wrists crunched and bent, wrenching all on their own at impossible angles.

Eloise covered her ears, unable to bear the screaming. She felt sick.

“Stop,” she whispered finally. “Please.”

It did. The man collapsed into a sobbing, bloodied heap.

When Eloise managed to look at Artisan, she startled to find his attention fixed on her.

They stared at each other for a stretch of silence that itched. She imagined being forced to choke on her own lungs, or her skull constricting in on itself until it squashed her brain into pulp. For being so bold as to run, he might snap her legs and reaffix them the wrong direction, or splinter her bones to poke, grotesque, out of her skin. They always did say that his victims were his personal works of art, bodies twisted into shells of monsters.

He crooked a finger, beckoning her.

The edges of her vision swooped fuzzy and vertiginous. She rose onto wobbly knees and pushed herself to her feet. When she swayed, Artisan caught her elbow, slipping an arm around her waist to lead her forward.

He did not look back at the others, with complete confidence that no one would challenge him.

No one did.

Eloise was barely aware of taking one step after another. When they arrived back in the villain’s cell, the bodies of Frenzy and the dead guard, thankfully, were gone, though the floor was streaked with the drag lines of their blood.

She wrenched her gaze away.

Artisan’s hand moved further down her arm to her wrist, gesturing that she sit on his bed. When she shifted to do so, his grip tightened, tugging her to a stop. She frozen and tried to read his face. 

His dark brows were furrowed, suspicious eyes flicking from hers down to her hand.

He pulled down her sleeve and held her wrist up between them, revealing the power-blocking cuff clamped around it. His head cocked. He waited.

Eloise swallowed. “I’m not a super. I mean- not a super-super. Just a…..no one.”

“A no-one who volunteers at The Max? With a power-dampener?”

“They’re terms of my probation,” she blurted. “A thousand hours of community service here and a power-inhibitor for a year. I think they put me here to threaten me with where I could end up if I continue on like… Um…”

“Me.”

“A villain,” she clarified, as if that was better. 

Her gaze flitted from the fingers wrapped around her wrist and up to the villain’s face again. The harsh lighting haloed him, dimly silhouetting his face. He looked haunting. He looked lovely. A beautiful house, old and creaking, wrapped in ghosts like a bride’s veil and left to rot. 

“What did you do?”

“I…” Eloise felt very small. “I lied about being powered on my documents. So that they wouldn’t put me on the registry. When they found me out, I tried to run away.”

Artisan’s scrutiny burned her cheeks. He let go of her wrist.

“...What can you do?”

“Nothing special,” she said, cradling her wrist–wholly uninjured as it was–in her other hand. “It doesn’t even work most of the time. My power is sort of…blending in. Going unnoticed. When it’s working, I could stand in a the White House and people’s attention would glide over me as if I belonged there. Not quite invisible, but… It just tricks your brain into not thinking twice.”

Artisan’s eyes narrowed.

Eloise flinched back a step, stumbling back over her fallen book onto the bed. She stared at him.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

Some of the tension eased from her shoulders, but she still waited for the catch. “Why aren’t you out there with the rest of them? Trying to escape?”

The villain considered her for a long moment. He sat down beside her, and the hard cot creaked beneath his weight. “Mm. That’s just it. No one inside the prison could have blown the power-dampeners. They require someone with powers to turn them off or on, and the security is impenetrable. My team has tried. Besides, if this was a simple power outage, the inhibitors would still be on. But they’re not. This was premeditated–and no one imprisoned here could have done it. No one on the outside could have done it. So. Process of elimination. Who’s left?”

That was the most Eloise had ever heard Artisan speak, and she could only sit and listen intently–As he had when she’d read him stories. Her brain whirred in a jumbled jigsaw of puzzle pieces. 

“It… It could only be an inside job.” She wet her lips. “The heroes- The higher-ups- They want the prisoners to break out so that they can kill them. A clean massacre. Justified under the law. The world’s most dangerous criminals could never be allowed to escape…”

Artisan smiled and it swirled something in her insides. “A convenient way to get rid of all of the pesky criminals clogging up the system. I’d bet anything that there are 50 snipers surrounding the building, waiting to slaughter anyone who steps foot outside.”

“Oh.”

“Oh,” Artisan agreed, his smile easing into something softer; something with less feral teeth.

“Thank you for helping me,” Eloise whispered. “What do we do now?”

Artisan hummed. He bent down and swept up her book, dropping it into her lap. He laid back against his pillow and crossed his arms behind his head. The bloodspots on his skin and clothes glittered in the lowlight. 

“Keep reading. I want to know how it ends.”

Part 2

[therobotmonster]

That was the deal.

That should have been the tell. The thing with its rotted rags and cackling bird skull was insistent that you accept it. You had to take the 'magic' willingly.

It reached in its chest and gave you a shard of something yellow, and crystal, yet organic. You slip it into your hand, pushing the shard under the skin until it starts moving on its own. Just like you were told.

It's more painful than it sounds.

That pain turns to anger, a sense of betrayal. You feel rage. How dare that thing torture you like this? Lie to you? The anger is hot. The anger is you. The anger is in your hands.

The anger is fire.

You're burning him and he's still laughing. The fire doesn't hurt it. You can't drown a fish in water, you can't burn a demon with hate.

It didn't mean anything, didn't do anything. But letting it go feels so good. You feel strong. Powerful. Righteous. You can feel the magic. It's emotion and metaphor, turning how things are into how things feel. It's a storm in your blood and you can ride the wind from inside.

So you leave.

It isn't hard to figure out how to control. It's easy to let go of the rational when the irrational flows from your hands. The flames and the ice and the lightning are all incredible.

It's other people's magic that's the real thrill.

When the tow-truck driver dives from his cab to avoid a stroke of lightning, instead of the sharp pang of ozone, you smell something sweet and heady, like chocolate melting into bubbling caramel. When the bolts hit it tastes like steak, juicy and tender. The fleeing people shimmer like diamonds in slow motion.

Their confusion as you step through a shadow and emerge in Chicago sounds like music.

You're shocked by how easily you interpret these sensations, how easy they are to decode. You know what they've done. What they fear. What they are ashamed of. You can smell it on them, taste it, like a sommelier with wine. The flames and the ice and the lightning are nothing compared to that. A wizard trades in secrets, after all.

In months you have everything a wizard might want. A tower of steel and glass. Minions. Treasure. The ear of the the local regent.

Things are just as you wanted.

-

The child was invisible.

He wasn't, not really. You've just aren't used to seeing with light anymore. You even remember the sound of him yelling as he charged you but you didn't react. It didn't feel real.

Unlike the pain in your head. That feels very real.

You always knew the assassins were coming. Their songs were loud. Their scents were heady.

The mighty wizard, clubbed by a child who was defending an animal. The acid your embarrassment weeps onto the floor sizzles as you try to stand.

You hear familiar claws on stone.

"Wondering why you didn't hear the brat coming?" It cackles.

"Obviously." You hiss.

"What is magic, great wizard?"

"Emotion."

"Simple as that?" It giggles like a kid waiting to open a birthday gift.

"Rage burns. Fear teleports. Disgust corrodes. Resentment freezes." You name off the tricks you've learned. "When they're mine. They smell and taste and feel when they're someone else's. Simple."

"So why didn't your sense the boy approaching? He was very emotional, I imagine. You injured his creature."

"It nipped at me. Wretched beast." You grumble. "Brave of the little basta-"

You stop. You don't know what bravery sounds like. Or how it tastes, smells, or looks.

You had to have sensed it somehow! You've seen many brave people, often before testing a new spell. You've seen happy and contented and joyful people, couples in love, a boy and his dog.

But only with your eyes.

"Negative emotions?"

"Oh, no need to be scientific. You aren't the mighty physician, you're the great wizard. Evil, friend. My magic is evil. Not the adjective or adverb. The noun. That which you do. That which you suffer." The bird thing cackled. "That's why you had to agree."

"Evil is a choice." Your voice sounds strange and hollow. "And the boy... There's nothing evil about protecting the helpless, those you love."

"Exactly."

"But I can still feel-" You try to protest but you can't finish the sentence. "Impossible! I've done so much. Used my power well. I'm a good person!"

"No. You're a very bad person." The creature's laugh becomes wilder and you can only watch as its head shakes loose from its spine. The creature's skull drops, falling to land in front of you. Even as it does it is still laughing, still speaking, as its body stumbles in search of it. "But lucky for you, I'm not here to make you a good person."

You look up at your creator, through his rib cage at his unbeating heart made of clear yellow stone. You can't feel your heart beating. You can't remember the last time you did.

"I'm here to make you a great wizard."

Becoming a wizard changes you

Biologically you are human

But for the purpose of magic and spells, you no longer are...

[tales-of-wocdes]

loved the demo! mc seems fairly interested in grandpa sheo (for obv reasons) and since they just heard mc speak in that void, I could see mc just talking aloud to grandpa’s cloak or the air like the ancient could hear them

Thank you! And that is a rather adorable thought! Well adorable because of MC, not necessarily adorable considering Sheo. Might even end up in the demo as an option...

-----------------

You settle down for the night, and settle your cloak in front of you. You sit cross legged on your bed and stare at the cloak.

Then start talking. About your day. What you ate. The snacks you had. The things you didn't understand. What you and the twins played today. Odd things Lexia said. Things Havard taught you. What you liked and did not like.

You go through your day, from being woken up by Havard, to the evening being tucked in.

Then you go to bed, feeling better for having told Grandpa about your day.

----------------------------

Somewhere far away, a traveler listens to a child speak about their day. The traveler does not answer, he just listens. He could block out the sound but he has time. Even as he senses the fortress full of cultists and calmly walks towards it, he has time to listen. Even as the gate turns to dust and he calmly walks inside, he can hear the description of a game of hide and seek between children. His face never changes, but he is glad that the child turned thing by cruelty is allowed to be a child again.

Innocence after all is worth protecting. Or so the traveler thinks as cultists burn and scream around him, pleading for mercy that will never come.