June Vignette #1

[Jasmine]

In accordance with the latest update, here is the first prompt for June!




Your character has an opportunity to meet his Future or Past self for one day. What do you do?



This will close July 1st! If you have a suggestion for a topic you'd like to see for the vignettes please post it in the Suggestion Box! Have fun!

[SirArtemis]

Artemis had lived a full life by his measure. He had loved freely, given openly, trusted completely, and fought virtuously. When his last moments came upon him in the world of the living and the love his life sat beside him one last time, he smiled. He smiled because in his last moments, he could still see the youthful face of the dark elf he had fallen in love with. Her lavender skin and silvery-violet streaks of hair complemented her beauty so well. His hand reached up to touch her face and wipe away a tear, and though he was weak and old, she helped lift his hand and nuzzled into it.

“You’ve made my life better in every way,” he managed to say through labored breaths. As he finished, he coughed harshly and Jay began to stand, as though to fetch some water. “No, it’s okay.” His voice had gotten raspier and weaker almost instantly, and a frown found its way to the dark elf’s face.

“It hurts so much to see you like this,” Jay said as tears streaked her face.

“See me how? Old?”

“Dying, Artie. I don’t want to lose you.” She kissed the hand that had found its way back to her cheek.

“At the end of every life comes death, but at least I can say that I’ve truly lived. I have no regrets.” As he finished, he turned to the worn nightstand beside his bed. The surface of the wood had been worn away after decades of use. Upon the nightstand stood a candle that flickered gently in the darkness of the room. Yet what sat beside it was what the man was looking at: a trinket in the shape of an hourglass.

“Are you sure you don’t want to use it?” Jay asked the dying man. “There is still time, Artie.”

He let his eyes meet hers again and smiled. “When I say no regrets, I mean it. Every decision I’ve made in my life has lead me to this place, and if I am truly happy with where I’ve arrived at the end of my journey, what lesson could I possibly go back and give a younger version of myself?”

“Nothing?” she asked.

“Well…” Artemis paused. “I could warn him of your peanut allergy. That was a bad birthday present.” They both shared a soft laugh at that, and Jay’s blue eyes sparkled in the candlelight.

As Artemis lay there with Jay by his side, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Nothing else mattered. He couldn’t hear the howl and bang of the windows as the Salvar summer ended and turned for the colder days. He didn’t notice the moonlight that illuminated the portrait on the far side of the room of Artemis and his closest friends - including Axel before he passed and the fiery dwarven Norlond brothers, and of course Jay herself. He did feel a bit of the sadness in Judicis, as the sentient bow lay beside him, just close enough for the magic to still reach, but he knew the spirit would keep Artemis’ memory alive and not dwell.

And so he looked upon her, the most important person of his life, who had lived alongside him through nearly all his hardships and accomplishments, and smiled. At the end of his journey, he was given the chance to go back and aid his younger self – perhaps give himself some advice. Yet he chose not to.

He chose not to because he was happy with his ending, and envied his younger self for getting the chance to go through it all again.

As his eyes began to feel heavy, he smiled once more at the dark.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you too,” Jay whispered a moment later, kissing his hand again.

At that moment, Artemis Eburi closed his eyes for the last time and spoke his final words: “I know.”

The candle beside the bed gave its last flicker of life as it dimmed, leaving the dark elf beside the love of her life as his spirit clung to the material realm. She lay beside him one last time, placing his arm around her as she fell asleep with tears in her eyes. This would be their last night together, and she knew not to waste it.

[Inwuhou]

In the snowy parts of the Comb Mountains there was be a valley. There were many valleys, but this one was unconventional. Rules like temperature or season or time of day gave it an evaluating look and then decided to go around to harass somebody else. Here, it was, is, and always will have been daytime in the glories of a late morning before lunchtime. Here, it was, is, and will always have been spring in its fullest expression before yielding to summer. The white doves were always plentiful, the cherry trees were always in bloom, and both of those gave no end of enlightenment to the nuns who had to constantly sweep up the doo-doo and fallen petals.

In this hidden green valley, where time was only a moment, was the nunnery of the Wuji nuns. They believed that time and history were like a very large echo chamber and enlightenment can be achieved by observing the past, if one knew how to listen. The nunnery's meditation chambers were very quiet places because everybody was too busy doing the equivalent of watching all the episodes of a reality show the size of the world at the same time.

In the Hall of the Three Delights, there was a single nun sitting cross-legged on a straw mat. She was young, perhaps fourteen, but her sash was already that of a Zing of the second level. Her sea-green eyes were barely visible under the nearly-closed lids. She managed a faint smile even as her lips moved in a silent recitation. The only sounds in the wood-walled room were her slow breathing, the very distant thud of exercising students, and the inaudible slumping of ashes from the burning incense stick into the ash bowl below.

Inwuhou was about to have had a very bad day and the wisdom of the nuns was such that they had kindly evacuated the Hall and removed all of the loose furniture. A young nun learning to observe the past is always tempted to try to follow it deeper out of curiosity for the past. A precocious young nun learning to observe the past is always tempted to try to twiddle it out of curiosity for the present. The nuns knew the day and hour of Inwuhou's success because she will have been successful at that time and they will have been knowing of it.

Inwuhou observed her own birth, the only time that she had ever been in the presence of her parents. She was unduly excited and the image was somewhat fragmented. She saw her mother start to fade due to the same complications that had orphaned her. What would it have been like if...? Inwuhou reached out with an untrained mind and touched.

There was a sharp cracking noise as air filled a gap. Two senior nuns, waiting outside, opened the doors of the Hall of the Three Delights and walked in unhurriedly. There was nobody in the Hall, only a warm spot on the mat.

"Couldn't resist. None of the young ones can. Well, might as well fix it." One said. They began to bend history around themselves, chasing smoothly after the thread of Inwuhou unmaking herself. One said to nothing, "Ah, finally showed up to see yourself, did you?"

Inwuhou observed the two nuns. She smiled and silently thanked them, beginners' accidents were usually the clumsiest and messiest ones to stitch up. Advanced students screwed up in subtle ways that were harder to find but easier to fix. For example, she was about to do something about the paradox headache that she was about to have had when she was put back.

A hand gently landed on her shoulder, right over her sash of a first Dong. Inwuhou's concentration did not break as it might have when she was a second Zing. She knew whom it was because she had never taken part of her attention away from the past of the passing present. The hand's owner knew this, too. After all, Inwuhou was her student.

"What is the sound of paradise?"

"Regret." The hand withdrew, satisfied with the answer.

Inwuhou was then for her own learning today. She carefully observed the two nuns put together the fragmented history that she had broken and, with a pop of displacing air, the second Zing reappeared on the mat. Then she had a terrible headache in front of the two masters. That day then, Inwuhou had learned never to try to alter major elements of her own past and the headache had etched the lesson all the deeper for it.

She gave herself a pitying look, then went to observe the lesson again. There were still some things that she hadn't quite caught the application of.

"Couldn't resist. None of the young ones can. Well, might as well fix it." One said. They began to bend history around themselves, chasing smoothly after the thread of Inwuhou unmaking herself. One said to nothing, "Ah, finally showed up to see yourself, did you?"

Fifteen times she watched, until she was sure that she knew what to do so when she would have the duties of tending to precocious students. First, though, she needed to practice under the guidance and care of a master. She reached out and twitched a fragment back into place.

"Ah, finally showed up to see yourself, did you?" One of the two nuns said.

(Notation on Grammar: Nonlinear time tenses are always difficult, so apologies in advance.)

[Amber Eyes]

A gasp filled the dark ally as the mystic pulled her hand to her chest and ducked out of sight. Her heart raced as a loud echo reached her ears, a knocked over garbage can screaming its protest. A shadow passed and the mystic laughed at herself, just a silly cat. she continued down the enclosed ally, listening intently for anyone who may have followed her, Sei would never approve of her visiting such a place. She was in the underbelly of Radasanth, home to sellers of stolen wares and dark magic. When she reached the shop she’d been looking for, Kyla rapped her knuckles loudly against the dark wood that was barely visible in the dim lighting. The knob turned and the door opened upon a dimly lit room of red. The couch in the corner, the wall, the tile beneath her feet, all a majestic burgundy that seemed to pull you in. The candle labrets on the walls only lit enough to barely make out the figure of an elderly woman in the corner, staring at the mystic with knowing, sunken eyes. She seemed frail, as though the softest touch would make her small frame fall to nothingness. With a swift move of her hand the door shut just as Kyla stepped out of the way, she then motioned to small wooden stool Kyla had missed in her first inspection of the space.

Kyla followed the order, sitting upon the small stood and feeling very much like a child in class. “I’ve heard you can create dreams?” After she spoke the words hung in the air, before the woman dismissively waved her hand.

“Dreams are but illusions my dear. I create miracles.” The elderly human stood, making her way towards a rack of assorted bottles and began to mix liquids in a small glass.

“So it’s true? You can tell me the future?” The mystic stood, her hands shaking as she remembered her ‘episode’ from the previous evening.

The woman seemed not to hear, still mixing the vials of amber colored liquid together, the soft clink of glass the only sound other than Kyla’s nervous breaths. The mystic opened her mouth to repeat the questions, assuming she spoke to quietly the first time when the woman turned.

“I know nothing of your future, dear child. I can only connect you with those that do.”

Kyla wiped her sweaty hands upon her gray cotton dress, something she bought to look inconspicuous while walking through the neighborhood. “I’m not sure that will work, I’m here because I fear I’m losing my mind. If you can only access a future version of me, I doubt I’ll find anything out.”

The woman turned with two vials in her hands, placing them on a small side table near her own couch before plucking two stoppers from a basket and placing them in the tops. “You would be surprised by the things you can learn from madness darling, though I would suggest the perhaps a visit to your former self would do more good, perhaps connect you to where it started in the first place?”

Kyla eyed the bottles, taking a deep swallow. “Could I do both?”

“Of course, only question is, can you afford both?” The woman eyed the handbag Kyla clutched and raised her eyebrows.

Kyla opened the pouch and pulled out several small coins, placing them on the table between the two, “Should that cover it?”

The woman smiled, quickly picking the coins up and holding them tight in her hand. “I believe so.” She gestured at the bottles, “Simply take them before bedtime and you should find your answers before dawn.”

Kyla stood, taking the glass vials and placing them gently in her purse. “Thank you very much.” She made her way toward the door, stepping back as it once again opened on its own. She had just made it through the threshold when the woman’s voice reached her ears.

“Have a good evening Miss Orlouge.”


She had been sleeping for several hours, but it was a fitful sleep. With every toss and turn her stomach ached its protest at its unfamiliar contents. The mystic was moments away from a trip to the infirmary when she opened her eyes and saw a young girl of no more than five standing at the foot of her bed. With a soft scream Kyla pulled the covers to her chest, eyeing the small bed across the room that held her sleeping son. “Are you?” She crawled to the edge of the bed, meeting the girl’s eyes that matched her own.

The girl gave her a knowing smile, dimples forming just at the edge of her lips. She gave a wobbly curtsey, “It’s a pleasure to meet you ma’am.”

Kyla laughed softly, grabbing the girl and pulling her onto the bed. She noted the small freckles upon her cheeks that had faded once she began living in the castle, and the scar on her forehead from a tumbling routine that ended with her head in a bucket. “Do you know why you’re here?”

The girl glanced down at the bed, her cheeks reddening enough to show even in the low light of the bedchamber. “You think there’s something wrong with me. I’ve always been a good girl ma’am. I can’t stop your voices.”

Kyla’s jaw dropped, “How do you know about the voices?”

“I have them too.” The girl’s smile grew as she looked up into her own face, no doubt noting how her features would age.

The older Kyla gently touched the girl’s hair, tucking stray strands behind her ear. “Do they scare you?”

The younger girl stood upon the bed, looking down at her older self. “Of course not silly, they’re my friends. Don’t you remember?”

Kyla furrowed her brow and looked at the circular patter of the stitching on her quilt. “I don’t, I don’t remember them at all.” Kyla looked up, suddenly realizing something. “How old are you?”

The girl answered with a proud smile, “I’ll be five next week.”

Her heart beat faster as she reached for the young girl’s hand. In one week this precious little girl would lose her mother and brothers. She would be separated from her father for years. “Do me a favor? Will you make sure to spend as much time with the family as you can before your birthday?”

The girl walked across the bed, laying her hands upon Kyla’s shoulders and placing her forehead upon Kyla’s own. “Silly, didn’t the voices tell you anything? I’ll forget all about this tomorrow morning.”

“But why?”

The girl pulled Kyla into her embrace, filling Kyla’s nostrils with the scent of wildflowers and pipe tobacco. The soap Kyla’s mom had used for laundry soap radiated from the shoulders of the girl’s cotton gown. She smelled of home. Kyla’s eyes filled with tears at the thoughts of all the girl would learn about human nature in the coming days. “Do you remember any of this?” When the words were gone so was the girl, leaving Kyla’s arms wrapped around air and her mind filled with more questions than answers. She unceremoniously lay back upon her pillows, punching them a bit harder than necessary to create a pocket for her head. The moment she found sleep it was pulled from her by a strange ghostly presence sitting atop her nightstand.

The woman before her was nearly translucent, as though with enough effort the mystic might make out the knickknacks adorning the small table behind the future her. The girl from earlier had been solid, if she hadn’t known about the visit beforehand she might not have even realized she wasn’t from this time and place. This though, this was different.

“You’re dead aren’t you?” There was not emotion to the phrase. Kyla’s eyes were wide as she tried to see signs of aging in her familiar face. She sighed loudly when she realized there wasn’t any.

The ghost simply stared back, finally nodding.

“How long do I have? You can’t be much older than I am now.”

“How would you find any joy in your life if I told you when it would end?” The other Kyla stood, her pale blue nightgown gliding across the floor as she made her way towards Akiv’s sleeping form, staring down at him as though seeing a ghost herself. “He is so beautiful.”

Kyla sucked in a breath, a sort of jealousy filling her. This woman had seen Akiv grow, but this child, not quite five, was hers. “He is, I’m sure he’ll grow into a handsome man some day.”

The ghostly figure turned, some strange emotion tightened every feature, was that pain? Fear? Disappointment? She spoke, her voice strained. “He does. He’s a good man. You’ll be proud of him.”

Kyla smiled, taking a few steps towards the small bed, watching the boy’s chest rise and fall in the dim light. “I am already. He’s the greatest thing I’ve ever done.”

“There will be days that you question that.”

Kyla jerked as though she had been slapped, furrowing her brows and turning to face her future. “I will never…”

The interruption was calculated, cold, full of anger. “You aren’t strong enough. You’re weak, all that power tucked behind such a simple mind. The great Kyla Orlouge, so much promise. You won’t be remembered for any of it, your legacy has always been destined to be that of a silly little princess who played with fire. And he will hate you.”

Kyla’s hand flew to her chest, a stabbing ache filling its entirety. “He can’t.” The words came out little more than a whisper. She sat down on the foot of her bed, the ghost standing before her. She pulled her legs to her chest and laid her chin upon her knees just like she had as a child, tears filling her eyes.

“You already know how this ends Kyla, they’ve been telling you for years. Did you think the voices would go away? No matter how hard you run from it do you not always hurt the mystics? You can’t run from it, but you’ll try none-the-less.” The woman turned, eyeing a small box wrapped with a bright yellow bow. “He hasn’t had his birthday yet then?”

Kyla shook her head as she crawled along the bed, making her way towards the headboard and resting against it, the cool wood soothing her aching head.

“I’ve often looked back on that day will bittersweet memories. This is his most prized possession.’

That brought a smile to the mystic’s face, she’d hoped he would love the gun.

The ghost laid the package back upon the coffee table, holding her hand over it longer than seemed necessary. “It’s also how he finishes you.”

The woman turned, watching Kyla’s reaction, “No, he doesn’t. Get out of here, stop telling me lies!”

“Oh poor, sweet little Kyla. He’s better off without you.” And then only air filled the room.

“Shut up!” The mystic yelled at the nothingness, her body convulsing as sobs began to overtake her. She allowed herself to fall into her mattress, curling up like a small child. Within moments she felt a small hand press into the skin of her arm. Without opening her eyes Kyla pulled Akiv into the bed, holding him tight and falling fast asleep.

[Silence Sei]

The mute crossed his arms as he looked to the smaller version of himself. It had been only a few years ago when ‘Silence’ Sei Orlouge accidentally transformed himself into a child’s body. Now, thanks to somebody probably messing with something within the walls of Ixian Castle, the Mystic was staring down a past version of himself.

Child Sei’s orange hair was shaven pretty short, though the color was still there. His blue eyes had not been hardened to the horrors of things such as war, and as such remained pure, full of innocence and wonder. He could not have been older than five, which would have explained why the boy had not been responding to any of the interrogations his older self was asking.

“And you don’t remember anything?” Sei asked his younger self with curiosity, tilting his head to the side. The only response out of the little one was a mirrored tilt of the head. Perhaps the pint-sized clone was some weird side effect of the mute’s Gemini Blades. The magic swords had malfunctioned in the past, and their most unique feature involved creating a doppelganger of the Hero of Radasanth. What if just maybe this was all some unique new ability that the Zodiac Weapons possessed?

“Wouldn’t explain the eyes,” Sei spoke aloud, tilting his head to his opposite side. Once again, the child mimicked his grown-up self with a similar head tilt. “Those eyes, they are definitely mine from my younger years, before I stepped out of Orlouge Drantrak.” He straightened his head back up, placing his thumb and index finger on opposite sides of his chin. The thoughtful look quickly inspired the rough draft Sei to copy once more, though he looked far more like he was pretending rather than actually contemplating.

“Maybe some of Aislinn’s magic…,” Aislinn Orlouge, the niece of the Drantrak Dragon, often found herself using witchcraft to meet her own needs. What if she had consulted the spirits as a way to send a message to her younger self, only to send back the younger versions of everybody else? This seemed like a likely answer to the kid conundrum, but the usually calculated Aislinn would typically avoid making a mistake like using a spells effect on a large radius.

“Perhaps Jensen is screwing with me,” The mute knelt, the first movements he made in which the bite-sized version did not imitate. Reaching out for the younger Sei, the Mystic pinched the youngling’s cheek, only to quickly be met by the child’s own cheek pinching technique. Jensen Ambrose was good at pulling pranks, and even better at disguising his little girl Azza whenever the situation warranted such things. However, both Seis seemed mutually satisfied that they were touching the genuine articles.

“This is quite odd,” Sei spoke, still hoping to garnish an answer from his younger self. It was not until this moment that the telepath had realized a very important detail. At age five, Sei was not in touch with his mental prowess yet. His younger self did not communicate because he was unable to. The mute’s eyes widened, both the epiphany of his childhood muteness and the fact that the child was displaying it all but proved that the little one was indeed a smaller version of Sei Orlouge.

“Excuse me a moment,” Sei bowed, a gesture once again performed by his little mimic as well, “I must go see our resident councilor, Play Back, about what I can do to stop seeing you.” Sei had finally figured all of it out; the stress of the war, of almost losing two of his daughters, it all made sense. This wasn’t magic, a prank, or even a cruel joke. This was Sei Orlouge starting to lose control of his mind; the one thing the Mystic had more faith in than his strategic abilities.

He turned from the boy, hurriedly rushing through the door leading out of his room and quickly towards the counseling room. As the young Sei stood in the dark environment, the winds bustling in through the open door, he raised his hands and began to move them, a way of ‘Walking’ to himself his parents had taught him known as ‘sign language’.

“<Who was that weirdo?>”

[Etheryn]

The unrolled mattress was too thin to mask pointed stones beneath, and offered only just enough comfort for Dan to sleep and forget the harshness of his environment. Exhaustion sapped his rest of dreams. An earthquake couldn't have roused him while he was belly-up beneath the stars that stood guard over their admiring traveller. Their student. A pilgrim.

Cold, haunting winds blew through the valley and rustled spindleweeds. Dust carried in clouds to reveal animal bones bleached white and sour by time and the elements. A brook trickled in a meandering path, bordered at the edges by blue green algae, and the route of the slowly flowing and burbling water followed the valley's median. The place was massive and deep, and smooth faces of basalt and volcanic rock rose an ominous fifty metres at either side. Crystalline jags and open, circular holes pocked the uniform surface, but were too infrequent to offer purchase for a man to climb. Whoever tread at the valley's bed would tread its entire length. There was no turning back now. This twilit night marked the seventh day of Dan's journey.

Dan tossed and reached to pull up blankets to warm himself. Half-awake, he grabbed air. He sagged with defeat. The dwindled embers of his campfire, starved of fuel in the barren landscape, offered little against the chill. One bleary eye winked open and his burly hand gloved in heat repellant Magim beast hide reached into the coal. He gripped it and brought it closer. Soon, even that small leisure became a handful of inert black ash. It added to the rest of his dishevellment; his overalls, once olive drab, were now brown and black with soot; his boots were coated in layers of dried clag; his face was ruddied and painted with stained earthen smudges. Each taint was welcomed. They weren't to be washed away or forgotten. They were trophies of the effort he'd gone to, and commendations of proof to show to the man--or to the thing--who waited for him at the other end of the seemingly endless trek.

Dan curled up. His lips were cracked, and when the breeze redoubled it stung their chafe. It was that persisent, cooing breath of nature that would always wake him. There was no shelter from it, and always it came at night and from the same northerly heading, like some great nocturnal beast waited for Dan to walk the valley's length and into its hungry, waiting jaws. The breeze became a gust and buffeted against his back. He tossed over to face it, and mineral sands of micah and grey and varying reds danced before his eyes in a trio of miniature dervishes. They merried about in a synchronised waltz, two pairing while the third broke away and returned to weave between and steal a partner from the other. They were just alive as the solitary man that was their audience until the wind gave up and they vanished as powder. It was a reminder just as much of a threat. Within the valley, things were shortlived. They moved with spirit and if the world itself willed it, they expired.

Dan propped up on an elbow. He surveyed his surroundings. The landscape was just as still as always, static and timeless. He peered up to the darkened borders of the valley's lips atop the polished rock of its sides. When Dan's eyes lamented on the insurmountable size of the valley walls, their smooth tungsten sheen reminded him of a northen sea on a still morning. Nothing was beyond them except the milky spangle of an empty sky. They were stalwart and immovable and Dan never felt quite so dominated by a feature of geography.

Secretly, he wished to see something looking down at him. Something watching. A predator, a friend, anything with eyes that saw and a heart that beat blood hot or cold through its veins. Something to see him, to witness his presence and repeat it to others so that should he perish on his journey, he would live on in someone else's memory of unimportant details until that someone forgot or died as well. Dan scanned the valley top, seeing only blackened stumps and boulders teetering at the precipice, intersperesed with wide stretches of flat, featureless gravel. No one looked down on him. No one knew he was here. Althanas forgot Dan the moment he decided to come to this forgotten place in the Outlands and seek mastery, understanding and control of the power that lived within him.

He stood, stretching out the enduring aches, and rolled up the limp foam of his bedspread. He sipped water from a cantina while stomping out the weak glimmers of flame, a spray of balmy orange remnants of his campfire spirited away by the breeze. His belly rumbled, and he knew the only satiation for it was the exercise of moving forward. He'd not eaten for days and the hunger was a dull and constantly nagging presence. A quiet tune whistled from his lips. He couldn't remember any more if it was was an old sailor's diddy or something he'd made up himself. There were words to go with it. He knew only two lines.

"There 'pon the water, there ye find me..."

Seconds were indistinguishable from minutes, from minutes from hours, and hours from days. The ebb of peach and yellow creeping into the ceiling of the world, morning heralds of soft pastel colours bleeding in to secrete the stars, were the only markers of time. Dan looked up and admired it. Thy sky was always a beautiful thing here. It never roiled with storms, never poured sleet or rain or snow, nor did anything but offer those who travelled beneath it a gentle distraction of from the lifeless greyscale beneath.

Onwards and on Dan's feet toiled. Gravel crunched. His mind wandered pockets of memory of other places and simpler times. His reverie was stolen by a fissure in the earth that hizzed vapour and hot steam and noxious gas. As peaceful as the sky was, the valley offered intermittent gestures of tectonic fury. The land was volcanic. At the beginning of the valley there were no signs or suggestions of it, but as Dan closed on the completion of his trial, the geography was decorated by scars of a belching planet. Pillows of solidified magma showed where flows oozed over the valley and came down as molten falls. Where trees may have struggled to live were stumps, any floral life aborted by flash fires started in the meekest spark of a wheezing lava fount.

"There 'pon the water, there ye find me..." he hummed. His words and whistles recited to him in strikingly clear echoes, almost like the environment stole his voice and mimicked him. He repeated the tune. He'd not grown bored of it yet.

Looking on a half-exposed skull of some oversized goat with an extra set of horns, all tipped in barbs and thorns that spoke of an animal who ate more than grass, Dan stopped his song. The thing was alien to him. The land was foreign, faraway, unknown, and so very dead. Nothing lived here. The bones that littered this place were of archetypes that woul'dve never hazarded the chance to eek out their existence in this environment. It was like some great rubbish dump of the bones of creatures that belonged in different times. A graveyard of things that were taken from their dying place because there was no room for them to rot there. Fish with a head at either end and a central empty space in their wide ribcage for some organ to propel them in their otherworldly waters. A rat with tusks and hooked spikes on its spine. A bizarre serpent, its head the size of a human's, with odd protrusions along its length that made no sense without flesh and muscle to demonstrate the mechanism of its movement. Each piece of weathered marrow and skeleton was abstract and something he'd never seen before.

He thought of taking bones with him. They'd be worth a fortune to an antiquator of Corone, or a curator in Raeria. A pocket full of them could fund early retirement and let him live out the rest of his years in comfort. He could turn back now, stealing the fossilised fruit of the valley, and journey all the way back to his meagre ship berthed at the dock of a nameless town populated by savages who spoke a dying language and painted themselves with self-inflicted scars and burns in honour of their dead gods. He could return to a mundane life, of getting up in the morning and eating a hot breakfast, of relaxing in the sun and not worrying of who'd try shank him from the shadows next, or capture him for ransom, or manipulate him to be a pawn for their own ends. He could father children, who could father children of their own, and there would be a great crowd when he left the world, all sorrowful and teary and full of his memories. He could avoid a slow, hungry, solitary death at the bottom of a pit, seen and mourned by no one.

Turning back would be easy. Just as the time had blurred while he was here, the remainder of his years would meld together and he would end content, without violence or incident. He could forget the preternatural force of his own will and the unknown ways in which it controlled the world around him. Dan toyed with it now, pinching a rock between his calloused, gloved fingertips and depositing it to the interior of a plain, unassuming leather satchel dangling from a knot in its drawstring and tied to his belt. Faint markings upon the pouches exterior were old runes of symbols of a nameless origin. Dan's ears buzzed and static crackled over his skin. He exhaled, and other pebbles and shale shards around him levitated in concentric circles, gently orbiting around him in opposite trajectories, like he was the centre of the galaxy, the sun itself, and the stones were his subordinate planets. He knew nothing of what lay beyond the sky, but for all his ignorance it could've been the same force within him which spun the whole world.

He could forget it. He could shelve the curiosity, parcel the desire, and let it gather dust. He could end without knowing what that power could make of him. What it could do for his loved ones, what it could do for those he never knew and those he'd forgotten, how it could benefit those downtrodden and defeated and raise them back up. How it could rain fire and justice on all the wicked and cruel natured men that infested the world over. He could ignore the chance to find out whether the power would place him among those same wicked and cruel people, or whether he'd stand tall and proud of every deed and crush them beneath his boot. It would be easier to never find out.

It would also be a waste. A disrespectful refusal of whatever omniscient, powerful being that'd passed him a priceless, invaluable gift. One that'd been the cause of wars fought throughout history and battles and bloodshed yet to come. Whatever thing waited for him at the other end of the valley, unknown how distant from where Dan stood now, may take offence if Dan showed his back to it. It may surge down on clawed feet and tear him to ribbons. It could swoop down from above on terrible leathery wings and incinerate him. Whatever it was, it sensed Dan's doubt. The breeze became a howl, focused into a powerful, deep note in the constricting throat of the valley. Dan's muddied scarf flapped in it like a bannerman's post. He leaned into it, and let his will subside. All the stones collapsed from the turbulent air around him and tumbled back to rest.

"What are you?" he spoke. The syllables were vacuumed from his mouth and stolen by the gale.

Dan's indecisiveness melted away when the wall of rushing air simply stopped, like someone closed a window to bar an oncoming stormfront. The silence was intense in comparison, until a distant, familiar pitch floated to his ears. He clapped a hand to his mouth, lips zipped shut, to be sure it wasn't his own habit. The valley was whistling to him and the very same tune he'd whistled to it over the days of his journey. It filled him with warmth. The sound was honey, pure and gentle and like soft blankets that wrapped his tired frame after an hour soaking in a hot bath. Something about it was more beautiful and more musical than anything he could ever create. It evaporated the notion of malice, the concept that the simple geography itself plotted to take his life for trespassing on its surfaces. It was a beckoning prod forward. He couldn't help but be tugged by the lobe toward it. Onwards he went, purely entranced by its sound.

What made the sound didn't matter. With patience that came easy in the task of getting closer to such a pleasurable sense. Dan marched on, knowing his answer would arrive soon enough. The sky tumbled over him, twice turning from gentle blue to deep black and spotted with distant celestial dots in a time lapse. Two days passed and he walked without rest, without stopping, without consideration for anything but the whistle. The soles of his boots were worn past the tread and to their insole canvas. Dried white spittle caked the crease at the edge of his mouth. The top of his bald pate was red with sunburn. The marks of the elements went unnoticed. Everything went noticed until he found it.

The whistle came from no horrible beast. It came from no vocal chords and from no instrument. It was but an orb, a marble sized piece of pure translucent crystal that pulsed with winding tatters of all the colours of the rainbow, intermittently casting bursts of light that formed kaleidoscope patterns on the projector screen of the valley's walls. It rest on a podium of pure iron, held in place by rusted prongs and claws that bound it like a precious jewel set atop a wedding band. The orb's bindings were ugly in comparison to it. They were nothing for Dan to pry away with careful chiselling of his hammer and knife.

He picked the orb up. It was warm to the touch, and the tune seemed more frantic, more joyous, even overzealous at Dan's arrival to lift it and cradled it between his shaking hands. It was a wondrous thing. He spoke to it, cooed softly like it were a baby animal, barked commands, threatened to shatter it, placed it into his runed satchel only for it to simply vanish and reappear in his hands or on the ground. He did everything he could, but all it did in return was baste his head in song.

Dan held it above and screamed bitterly. "What now? What do I do? What am I from here? Am I dead and gone? All for this...this trinket?"

The orb ignored his fury. Dan raged a day longer, ignorant, belligerant, improperly violent in the presence of its grace and gentleness. He was about expired from dehydration and hunger and sunburn and exhaustion. On his back he lay, face up, the orb on his belly, still whispering the tune he still couldn't remember completely, still mocking him with its secret. Dan was too weak even to stand and retreat with the jewel to hock it for ale and drown his sorrows over the whole pointless venture. It raised and lowered on the jagged, shallow movement of his diaphragm as he drew dying rattles of breath.

Finally he gave in. The orb and its bearer formed a duet. Dan whistled the lines he couldn't remember, and toiled best he could in the gravelly rasp of his parched throat to bring about a solid note for those two lines he still knew.

"There 'pon the water, there ye find me...I be lost for all ever, wander all leagues o' the sea..."

It was instant. The world splintered apart in collapsing mirror frames, like a vanity shot through with a blunderbuss and raining pieces that reflected brief views of the other pieces which reflected back again in an endless, chaotic loop. Each particle of Dan's being was torn apart and shoved through a meatgrinder and blasted through time and space into what seemed to be another world where he reformed and was a spectator high above the clouds. He floated, reassembeled as person yet lighter than air. He saw the solidity of his own limbs and touched his fingertips to his face. He pinched his skin and felt the twang of nerves. Blood dripped from the long slice he put to his forearm, just to see that he was still made of muscle and still filled with the fluid of those who lived. All real, he was a man looking down on a world like he'd created it. There were no wings beating angelically from his back. Nothing. Gravity was on vacation. He was simply there, suspended loftily above the clouds.

He yearned to see what was beneath the marshmallow shapes of the clouds, and willed himself down through them. It was easy to fly and he descended great distances in impossibly short time, quicker than the fastest and most nimble thing of any sky of any place.

Below him lay a wasteland. A scarred expanse of torched plains turned black and glass by tides of nuclear fire. The planet defied its shackled path around its star and stepped too close, only to be purged of colour and blasted into absolute exctinction. As Dan hovered hundreds of metres above a mountaintop, symetrical from its jagged top down, he spun in place. He looked for birds that may have scattered at his sudden, unexplained presence, fleeing to give their potential predator a wide berth and no reason to swat them down. He struggled to see the shadows of herd animals scratching out an existence in the possibly fertile ashlands. Anything. A blade of grass, a tree, a stagnant creek. The land still and so very, very dead.

Dan despaired at the destruction of it all. Lower he went, coming closer to the mountain peak, and as he closed in to land there was a violent eruption. The crown of it split apart and spewed a geyser of flaming rock and blazing debris and superhot gases from deep within the core. The mushroom cloud was vast and announced its presence with a concussive clap. The crusts of the world ground and fought against each other, and the mountain shook into rubble and oozing magma in the powerful quaking. The spectacle was awesome and at the same time vulgar and crass. A demonstration of power and dominance. He soared out of the way, floating effortlessly backward out of the pyroclast.

The magma flowed out in all directions. It swept over the land that'd been burned so many times before, and pooled and congealed in a long, winding crevass that formed a serpentine shape for miles and miles until it couldn't be seen in the horizon. It was familiar, having walked it for over longer than a week. Dan knew it was the valley where he'd found the orb. He knew if he was dreaming would be the time to wake up. If he was dead, he was seeing his bones and the last of his time on Althanas being erased and cauterised into forgotten history by the vomitory of molten rock. It was bizarre to look down on where one should be.

Then, on the opposite side of the volcano and its ash nova, Dan saw a shape. A streaking figure that trailed smoke like an asteroid sizzling away from descent through the atmosphere. It moved fast, flat, and didn't arc down like all the boulders the volcano expelled in its explosion. An incredibly larger shape followed it, bigger by a factor of millions, too immense to be airborne or even real, and it shook of great slabs and waves of blazing, molten earth and acres of the mountainside itself, like an enormous shaggy dog ridding itself of mud. It cried out a vicious roar like the volcano itself, and the shockwave of its sounding, Dan realised the mountaintop didn't come open by its own accord and building pressures within. It was smashed open by the creature that'd come up from beneath the surface, and was quickly revealing itself as it moved in what looked like slow motion, but was actually incredible quickness made lethargic by its own massive girth.

Dan soared off through the sky to get a closer look. It was exhilerating, amazing, above and beyond all belief to enjoy the sensation of covering a hundred metres by air in the same time it would take to walk one percent of that distance on the ground. He was clean now, no longer hungry, no longer tired or sore. This had to be it. This had to be life after death. The world was dead too, it seemed, except for the subterranean beast, but Dan ignored the depression beneath him for the bliss of simply coasting over it at hundreds of miles an hour. He dared to dip close and see the blurring, blistering speed at which scorched topsoil fell away behind him. Points that were hundreds of metres in the distance became points hundreds of metres behind him in less time than it took to realise their passing. A cloudy wake rose up behind him, the intense kintects of his flight marking a streak of dust like the trailing clouds from the two other flying figures above. Dan angled up to see them.

The beast above, now revealed to be a four eyed copperhead snake, each scale made of grey, sooty rock and wider than the shingled roof of houses, its nostrils exhaling snorting licks of fire, was moving even quicker. Dan realised it wasn't flying. It was simply coiled up and raised like a cobra, the remaining half of its length still buried beneath the trembling earth. It chased and hunted after something, the miniscule blur that zipped ahead of it, and Dan had to know what the terrible monster wanted for dinner. He pitched up and came close until the snake consumed his entire field of view, and then barreled over top of it to look down from above. It didn't notice him, it's dull, cataract grey eyes wide with bloodlust and a sickly purple tongue lashing from between its spire-like fangs that ejaculated acidic pools of clear, hot venom that scoured the dark ground below to a sterile, featureless bone white.

It took only an urge, a wish for higher velocity, for Dan to break the sound barrier and streak ahead to catch up to the snake's fleeing prey. A shockwave boomed behind him at the pace of his flight and he saw it plough air into condensed streams of vapour. Something spared his eyes and ears of the buffeting wind, and there was no more than a gentle blow on his facial features. He didn't even need to squint to keep clear focus on the figure he closed in on.

Within fifty metres he could see flapping robes, brown and grey and tattered and burned, like a hermit draped in cast-off rags somehow cheated physics and became a rocket himself. He closed in, and the figure tumbled in the air to face him, voluminous hood disguising its face. Its hands moved swiftly in front, gesturing traced shapes in the air, and coalescing lightning and fire formed like a crackling, white-hot cannonball. The spirit bomb hovered threateningly. Dan wasn't afraid of it. He zipped closer to view the face of its maker.

The bomb rushed past Dan quicker than he could see it, landed between the snake's hungry jaws, and its shattering detonation blasted the world and reality into smithereens in just the same way by which Dan was brought there. In the cleansing white light of atomic fire, the same force that'd scoured the world--Althanas, some inderterminable time in the future, it seemed--it was easy to see the face of the man who'd conjured it.

Brown eyes, a square jaw of boater's tan and stubble punctuated by a pink scar on the chin. A bulldog's thick neck set atop burly shoulders. A rogue's knowing grin, smug with the reveal of a secret, curling in just the right way to be familiar. More scars and marks that were reminders of won battles than only one person could've been in, set in just the right shapes and too congruent in their placement to belong to any other person.

Dan saw Dan. Himself, real and flesh, toying with and destroying monsters larger than any storyteller even dared to exaggerate. A gnarled oak staff in one hand and hooked dagger in the other. Floating backwards and comfortable faster than any man ever moved, controlling and shooting tiny suns like they were skipping stones on a pond.

"This is what you can be," the Dan of the future, the indominatable wizard, said. "This is what can become of you. This is what can become of the world. Think hard on how far you pursue power and how much you'll pay for it."

"I...I..." Dan sputtered.

The other self shook his head. Reality broke apart and reassembled. He was prostrate before the empty iron pedestal, on a refluffed mattress with a pillow and beside a fed horse, knapsack stuffed with water and supplies and dried food. A change of clothes and new boots still coated in a lacquer of parade gloss that smelled of oils and tannin. He blinked and slapped and pinched himself thrice. The orb was gone, perhaps never real, yet the sundries left in its wake were true form when touched. Dan would live yet.

There would be more than week long return trek to ponder. How could the vision be believed, and consequently the message? Was it even a vision, or was he torn from his own time and taken to see himself in the future, and thus answer his own questions in a perpetual, paradoxical loop? Should he heed it or not? All the arrogance shown in his entire life so far didn't equal the sum of the lofty assumption of himself as such a mystical, ageless wielder of the arcane. It didn't compute. He walked back more puzzled than when he'd started, yet more wary and more cautious. His belly was full when he glut on sweet oat breads and sugared jerky. The rumbling, empty hunger was replaced by a need of another kind.

[Hysteria]

The Ixian Castle stood as a safe haven for me for many years. Before I came to the arms of the Knight Capitan Sei and my fellow nights I had wandered across the the countryside without hope of a better life or higher purpose. The day I joined The Knights though, things get better, things got simpler. One night the safety of those walls was shaken, and I was reminded of the life that I had left behind.

I was asleep; dreaming dreams forgotten. The silence was broken by a whisper. The tiny noise moved through the air like a spider across a web, each step as cold and alien as the creature it embodied.

“Talen... Wake Talen.”

I vaguely remember waking, blinking and confused as I tried to move my sleeping brain into gear. The voice came from the darkness above my head, but I couldn't see anything but the darkness.

“Talen, you have strayed from the path.”

As fear moved deep within me I stared with wide eyes at the shape materialising above me. The creature had eyes, black and cold. The teeth that glistened within the wolven jaw seemed to thirst to taste my flesh.

“My what big teeth you have...” I mumbled with what little courage I could muster. Why those were the words that game out of my mouth I have no idea.

“It has been months, and not a single soul has been sent to the shadows. Your power has ceased to grow as it did when as it did when you took lives freely. Now these knights...” the creature spat the words, “this 'Sei'... they corrupt your shadowy soul. They change your purpose from what we chose.”

“We? Who are you?”

“How easily the bodies of mortals forget.” The creature's already animalistic grin widened further, “I am you Talen. I am your shadowy form that you left behind to join the physical world. I am what you look like on the inside.”

The words reverberated within my chest. The creature in front of me was far from my mirror image, an avatar of the shadows that I manipulated perhaps, but not me. Not me. My fear turned to anger and I pulled from shadow hold one of my clawed gauntlets. The shadows encased my arm for a second, then cleared leaving the armour. I lashed out at the figure, the creature's face broke like liquid and the gauntlet passed through like nothing was there.

I rolled out of bed and stood in the middle of the room with the claw poised to attack the first thing that appeared.

“You know what I am saying is true Talen. You lust for the power gifted by killing. You may fight it, but what of the feeling you had when you first pledged your allegiance to N'Jal? What of the ecstasy of it all”

I swiped the claws through the air, slashing at the sound of the voice. It seemed to come from all around, from every shadow in the room. I knew that the creature was right. Each swing met nothing but air, each time I felt my defences fall a little more. I yearned to feel the life slip through my figures once more. To take those souls for my own glory.

I could take it no more and collapsed in the middle of the room breathing heavily, defeated by the truth that struck harder than any blow I could imagine.

“Thats better. Now this is how we are going to...”

[Jasmine]

Thank you everyone for your entries! Etheryn took first place and Sir Artemis took second. Don’t forget to check out the other prompts and keep writing!

Etheryn – 300 EXP and 200 GP
Sir Artemis – receives 560 EXP and 175 GP
Inwuhou – receives 100 EXP
Amber Eyes – receives 400 EXP
Silence Sei – receives 850 EXP
Hysteria – receives 300EXP