25th-2nd - February Writing Challenge #3

[Mordelain]

15-21st - Word Challenge
A simple 'include these 5 words' in a 500 word post in the most creative way challenge! Designed to increase your vocabulary and make you think about how you use your words.

The words are:

Presumption

Combustion

Chocolate

Abyssal

Contrary

Good luck to all participants!

[Flames of Hyperion]

Stillness returned, but silence eluded. Smouldering shadows whispered honeyed mockery just beyond conscious reach. He let them linger like a swirling winter wind: lost in thought, paying no attention to their insidious accusations.

When it dawned he had no intention of listening, they coalesced into smoky features as familiar now as the scars upon his chest.

“Your presumption is quite preposterous, phoenixborn,” Natosatael chuckled. Discordantly interwoven voices trickled through the young man’s mind like molten chocolate, blistering hot sweet pain into every exposed synapse. “She let you live because she wishes to see you suffer further. Not because she has seen you suffer enough. Or did you truly believe that you would get away so easily?”

Defiant, the nameless wanderer wrenched away from the suppurating carbuncle-like pupils focusing the smoke. It laughed again, sundering the remnant tranquillity in ear-shuddering delight.

“Ah, but of course. Even you don’t believe that. You too would rather see yourself suffer further for your sins, would you not?”

Something hardened, exhaustion and pain invading with bloody tendrils the depths of the young man’s gentle brown eyes. Something brutally honest, something frighteningly fearful, that against all odds actually agreed with the daemon.

“Oh, how woefully weak were you when you stood against the Necromancer! How pitifully unprepared for the havoc he wrought on your mind as one by one your comrades fell! Yet you had the audacity to survive! And by doing so, you dragged her into the whole mess!”

Natosatael’s merry mirth lasted long enough to drive the dagger home. Then it mutated jagged and ugly, tearing and sawing into the fresh wounds.

“Mayhap I should eliminate her now, to spare her what awaits.”

Emotion flared raw and powerful, spurting from the young man’s huddled form like arterial blood. The shack blazed in sudden flame. Incandescence pure and white lashed hungrily at dilapidated timber, reaching high into the starry night to devour the watchful moon whole. Stark shadows seared amusement into Natosatael’s disembodied features.

As abruptly as they had spawned, the arcane fires disappeared. Wintry air rushed into the emptiness left behind by the brief heat explosion; secondary combustions, gripping mounds of decaying refuse, fumed noxiously into the frozen chill. He concentrated, mad with sincerity, upon the daemonic apparition.

With great effort he croaked a single hoarse whisper amidst a plume of exhaled steam.

“Don’t.”

He didn’t elaborate, knowing it beyond his frozen throat. But the beacon branded upon the dark wasteland signified his unambiguous intent.

Even in the abyssal depths of Haidia itself, few dared to look Natosatael din’Pholoris in the eye, much less deny its rightful pleasure. Any less an offender, and the daemon would have torn him limb from limb without batting an eyelid.

But this time, it merely grinned as it winked from existence. Its voice lingered for moments longer before finally shocked silence settled.

“Contrary to popular belief, even we daemons like to play by the rules sometimes. And I always save the tastiest morsels for last…”

[Ihimirsyn]

Ring, ring, the watchman's bell echoed through the shadowed streets. It was two o'clock, all was well, and in search of a smoke the watchman beat a leisurely retreat. In the cloying, combustion-suffociating drizzle lamp-flames guttered, carving dancing shadows from the overcast night.

A black spot moved amongst that melange, a cloak that shrouded its wearer from head to ankles, leaving just two bare feet visible. They were covered in the chocolate mud splashed up from amidst the cold cobbles. They stalked quietly onwards, their silence like an abyssal hole in the hissing of weather and the distant plinking of water on a watchman's helmet.

From a second-storey window poured a deluge of light, the product of near two dozen lamps and candles burning away the darkness. Inside was a bed, its sheets stained yellow with age. In the bed was a woman, writing furiously upon a lap-desk. Her activity was entirely contrary to the supposed infirmity characteristic of the last days of grey rot.

As she put her pen down and added another sealed envelope to the towering stack on the nightstand, there came a polite knock at the kitchen door downstairs. Heavy footsteps gently vibrated the floorboards. There was a creak, a loud slam, and a moment later a large man had thundered up the stairs and appeared in the bedroom door.

"Grandma! It's- it's- it is DEATH!"

Without looking up, Grandma licked her pen and started on another letter. "Let him in, Hank."

"But- but-"

"Let him in. And don't go slamming doors in people's faces. We don't do that here."

A minute later, there was a fresh trail of mud in the door, across the kitchen, up the stairs, and into Grandma's bedroom. She still didn't look up.

"Just a moment. I have to finish this letter." Grandma said. She was a little surprised that she was not instantly struck down for her presumption. A shame; there were few things more speculation-fueling than a secret-divulging letter that trailed off mid-sentence. After a few more lines, she signed, sealed, and finally looked up.

The trouble with the whole skeleton-and-black-cloak work uniform was that Ihimirsyn was considered indecently-clothed almost everywhere. The way the rain-soaked fabric clung to her curves didn't help matters. The dignity of the office still prevailed, "Ms. Trechora Nott?"

"Yes. You're very late. Couldn't you have wiped your feet on the way in?"

"I had some trouble finding the place."

Trechora Nott looked away to the windows. Her reflection appeared to be trying to stifle a smile, "They're calling it a miracle, you know. Living two years longer than anyone else with the gray rot."

"I'm sorry. I had some trouble finding the place."

"Don't apologize!" Trechora snapped back, "People in public office shouldn't spend their time apologizing. They should fix the mistakes."

Ihimirsyn wordlessly stepped forward. A gleaming blade of white light sprang into being in her raised hand. It swept down.

Ihimirsyn wordlessly stepped past a weeping Hank and into the wet night.

[Mordelain]

Thread Title: February Vignette Challenge #3
Judgement Type: Vignette
Participants: Ihimirsyn, Flames of Hyperion

Scores are Ihimisyn, and Flames of Hyperion

Plot

Story ~ 7/5
Setting ~ 6/7
Pacing ~ 5/5

Character

Communication ~ 5/5
Action ~ 5/5
Persona ~ 6/7

Prose

Mechanics ~ 4/6
Clarity ~ 5/5
Technique ~ 5/6

Brief: 10/10

Brief: What can I say? You both followed the brief perfectly. You both showed creative and conventional use of using the supplied words, and took it upon yourselves to be creative with what would ordinarily be a list of mundane, unexciting terms. Excellent work!

Ihimirsyn: 18/16/14/10 = Total = 58
Flames of Hyperion: 17/17/17/10 = Total = 61

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I would be happy to develop on the points above, or provide more in depth examples based on those notes if requested. cydneyoliver@gmail.com, or my Mordelain inbox are both appropriate avenues to do.

If you have any concerns, doubts, and worries, and do not wish to speak to me directly for whatever reason, then I am sure another member of staff will resolve the matter on your behalf. I am perfectly amenable and open to feedback, as the judge has to develop, as much as the writer put under the scrutiny of the rubric!


Experience, gold, and other rewards will be calculated and added together once all judgements are completed.